


something to rely on

by level3puckbunny



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, M/M, Nuge dressed as Spock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 00:47:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/level3puckbunny/pseuds/level3puckbunny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Ooh, here’s how to summon a demon to, and I quote, ‘wreak the havoc of Hell’s minions down upon your enemies.’” Jordan turned a few pages. “Oh, and how to get one to ‘fulfill your every carnal desire.’ You’ve hit the jackpot, here,” he said teasingly. “This sounds incredibly useful and not at all like it’s complete and utter bullshit.” </p>
<p>In which Jordan Eberle and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins are nerds instead of hockey players and Taylor Hall is a sex demon. No, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something to rely on

**Author's Note:**

> So this was originally supposed to be a short present for a friend, and ended up 43 pages of fluffy demon-summoning porn. Many thanks as usual to yummysubculture for basically outlining this for me, especially the ritual at the beginning, although if she hadn't had that dream of Taylor Hall with horns this wouldn't have happened at all.
> 
> Since I only speak English, a tiny bit of German and "beer" in ten languages, and I could not for the life of me find a Tuscan online translator, there's some terrible Google Translate Italian in there. I apologize to the entire country of Italy for that.
> 
> Last, a warning for a brief mention of past underage dub-con at one point.

_Ryan_

            It wasn’t every day one stumbled across a book on demonic summoning at a gaming store in Edmonton, Alberta, and Ryan paged through it, trying to figure out if it was serious or not. It was certainly dry enough to be serious, but again, it was about demonic summoning.

            “What are you looking at?” Ryan glanced up as Jordan came around the shelf, looking at him curiously.

            “This.” Ryan passed the book to Jordan, who frowned down at the cover.

            “ _The Summoning of Creatures of Darkness and Other Unholy Magicks_? This can’t possibly be serious.”

            “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Jordan opened the book to a random page and scanned it.

            “Ooh, here’s how to summon a demon to, and I quote, ‘wreak the havoc of Hell’s minions down upon your enemies.’” Jordan turned a few pages. “Oh, and how to get one to ‘fulfill your every carnal desire.’ You’ve hit the jackpot, here,” he said teasingly. “This sounds incredibly useful and not at all like it’s complete and utter bullshit.”

            “Shut up,” Ryan said, taking the book back. “It looks cool, anyway. Maybe I’ll give it to Adam as a present or something.”

            “And let your brother summon the sex demon? You’re a way more generous sibling than I am.”

            “Ew,” Ryan said seriously, and Jordan laughed. “You got what you wanted?”

            “Yeah,” Jordan said, showing Ryan the cheap paperbacks he was holding, one of which had a dragon on the cover, the other a barely clothed and very busty young woman. “Let’s go.”

            The clerk at the counter gave Ryan’s grimoire quite the side-eye as he flipped the cover open to look for the price sticker.

            “I couldn’t find a price on it,” Ryan said apologetically, and the clerk, a guy they played _Magic: The Gathering_ with sometimes named Sam, shrugged.

            “One second, let me ask Ference.” He disappeared into the back, before reappearing a few minutes later. “It’s practically falling apart, he’ll give it to you for three dollars.”

            “Cool.” Ryan dug out a few wrinkled bills and dropped them on the counter, and Sam bagged the book, handing it to him and ringing him up. Ryan stepped back so Jordan could pay for his terrible paperbacks, and Sam laughed when he saw Jordan’s choices.

            “Did you pick these solely by awesomeness of cover?”

            “Oh, yeah,” Jordan said matter-of-factly. “I wanted one with both a dragon and a chick in a bikini, but I couldn’t find that.”

            “Better luck next time. That’ll be four bucks.” Jordan handed over a five-dollar bill. “You know, maybe if you guys weren’t in here every day buying shitty books and _Magic_ cards, Nugent-Hopkins would be able to afford jeans without giant holes in them, and you wouldn’t be living in the worst neighborhood in Edmonton.”

            “Shut up, Gagner,” Ryan said, a touch affectionately. “Ready to go, Ebs?”

            “Sure.”

            Late that night, Ryan found himself sitting in bed reading his new book. He should have been doing homework, but hell, this was way more interesting than problem sets. There were about ten different rituals in it, everything from raining Hellfire down on your enemies to gaining ultimate knowledge, but the one he kept returning to was the one about summoning a sexual companion. The concept sounded more and more appealing the longer he thought about it. Ryan was lonely, hadn’t dated anyone since Emily from his lit class had dumped him nearly a year ago, and while he had been nursing a crush on Jordan for what felt like an eternity, Jordan had never shown the slightest sign of a romantic interest in him, despite all the jokes cracked by their gaming friends. He could really use a sex demon in his life.

            Why the fuck shouldn’t he try it?

            Jordan was working the night shift at his job at a local 7-11 the next night, and in preparation for his experiment, Ryan went to the craft store after class. The cashier looked at him skeptically as he dumped the supplies the book had said he needed on the counter, and Ryan tried to look as casual as possible.

            “What kind of project are you working on?” she asked him, and Ryan shrugged.

            “It’s for an art class,” he lied. “Installation, you know, that kind of thing.”

            “I see. That’ll be $43.89.” Apparently summoning a demon would involve emptying out his bank account. It was the damn silver ring. He’d considered getting one that wasn’t real silver, but had decided that he was going to be fudging enough stuff, he probably shouldn’t fudge that bit if he didn’t absolutely have to.

            His next stop involved going to a graveyard and, doing his best to avoid the groundskeeper or any visitors, digging up some dirt. Fortunately, it was a cloudy, cold day, and there weren’t many people around, so he took a large Ziploc bag of dirt off a freshly dug grave and called it a day.

            Jordan was already at work by the time Ryan got back to their place. Figuring that if he was going to do it, there wasn’t any point in waiting, Ryan rummaged around in the kitchen for the rest of the things he needed and started to set up. He taped out a pentagram on the floor rather than painting it, because his landlord was terrifying and might cut him for painting on the floorboards, and then set candles at the points--four black and one red. Apparently the red one was “apple cinnamon” scented, and Ryan winced, wishing he’d had the sense to read the goddamn label before buying it.

            “This is going to go so badly,” he said aloud, before sighing, figuring that if he’d gotten this far, it would be stupid to not go through with it.

            Instead of an altar cloth, Ryan used a plain linen placemat he’d found at the craft store. He wasn’t fucking robbing a church or something to conjure a sex demon, that would definitely send him straight to Hell if the demonic summoning didn’t do it first. He put a bowl of oil in the middle of the pentagram--the spell had called for a stone bowl, and Ryan had looked for one in vain, before just deciding to use the chipped bowl from the kitchen. It said “stoneware” on the bottom, so that had to be close enough, right? The only oil they had on hand in the kitchen was cheap olive oil, so that was what he poured into the bowl, and instead of an athame (which was something he’d had to Google), he had Jordan’s Swiss Army knife. The last thing he did was sprinkle the grave dirt in a circle, and then he unwrapped the silver ring from its packaging, tossing the box across the room.

            “Okay,” he said to himself once he’d gotten all those things assembled, and then, making sure the blinds were closed, stripped off his clothes. It was cold in the apartment, since it was Edmonton in January and their heating system was shit, and Ryan shivered as he took a seat facing the tools and red candle. He opened the book to the relevant page and, trying to clear his mind like it instructed, started to read the spell.

            Immediately, he felt himself flush, and his skin start to tingle. It was probably because he was nervous, he rationalized, and kept reading. When he reached the right point, he pricked his thumb with the penknife, trying to ignore how his hands were trembling, and dripped the blood into the bowl of oil, stirring it. He read some more, and suddenly the candles guttered and the streetlight outside went out. Hands shaking uncontrollably, he dropped the ring into the oil, before continuing to read.

            He could hear the wind outside, blowing hard, whipping the trees back and forth. Following directions in the book, he dipped his fingers into the oil, starting to touch his chest and trying to imagine the touch as coming from another being, until the sensation started to feel as if from an outside force. It felt profoundly stupid, but the thought of what he was trying to do had him half-hard already, and he figured he might as well cut to the chase and jerk off. Ryan had a lot of practice with masturbation, and he got himself into it pretty quickly, the oil providing some nice lubrication. When he first felt the sensation of someone--or something--else touching him, he chalked it up to his imagination. It didn’t stop, but it felt nice. Good. Pleasurable. He kept going.

            Something touched his cock. He froze, his hand stilling, but the sensation continued. It felt like the best blowjob he’d ever gotten, and he leaned back a little, closing his eyes and losing himself to the feeling. He’d never had a fantasy this believable, but maybe it was just the weirdness of this situation. It didn’t take long for him to come--stamina was definitely not one of his strong suits--and he opened his eyes, only to see that there was a man in the circle now, Ryan’s cock in his mouth.

            _Holy fucking shit._

            Ryan jerked back, stumbling to the other side of the room (careful not to disturb the dirt, or knock over any of the candles), and the man straightened up, wiped his mouth off, and grinned positively cheekily at him.

            “Hi, Ryan.” Ryan struggled to find his voice. “Are you all right?” The man--the _demon_ \--sounded vaguely amused. He was big--about Ryan’s height, but broader in the shoulders, dressed in only leather pants and boots, and breathtakingly handsome. Around his neck was a collar, and Ryan was still with it enough to notice the silver ring he’d bought on the front, now engraved with some kind of strange etchings. Blond, blue-eyed, and with a full mouth that looked like it was made for blowjobs, the demon looked like he could have been a member of some boy band except for the fact that he had horns.

            Horns. Actual, literal horns, in a reddish-coppery color that matched the leather of the collar.

            What the fuck had Ryan done?

            He was momentarily certain he was going to puke, and bolted into the bathroom, slumping down in front of the toilet. He didn’t actually throw up, but instead curled up with his face in his knees, trying to calm himself down. This was exactly what he’d wanted to happen. It had gone right. Even the fact that he’d gotten a male demon made sense--he was so hung up on Jordan that obviously that was what the spell had chosen to conjure.

            Once he was sure he wasn’t going to throw up, he got to his feet and went back into the living room. The demon was sitting in the center of the circle, playing with Jordan’s knife and looking a touch bored. He looked up when Ryan came in.

            “Done freaking out?”

            “You’re a demon,” Ryan said, just to clarify. There was that cheeky grin again.

            “Yup.”

            “Are you...are you going to eat my soul?” Ryan asked, trying not to sound terrified. The demon snorted.

            “You’re new at this, aren’t you?” Ryan had to nod. “If you’d read the whole spell, you would have seen the bit where it says as long as I’m wearing this-” He pointed at the silver ring in the collar, “I can’t hurt you in any way.”

            “Oh,” Ryan said, trying to conceal his relief. “Do you have to, like, do my bidding?” The demon laughed at him, like Ryan had just said the funniest thing possible. “What?”

            “If you wanted a servant, you should have used a different spell,” the demon told him. “I can’t cross this circle, but once you break it, I can do whatever I want except cause you harm.” Ryan let this process for a few moments.

            “Okay,” he said. “I need to not be naked. One second.” The demon watched him with some amusement as he hunted around on the floor for his clothes and tugged on his boxers. Feeling a little more in control of things, he took a seat outside the circle, crossing his legs and studying the demon. “What’s your name?”

            “You can call me Taylor.”

            “Is that your name?”

            “Nope,” the demon said obliquely, and Ryan decided not to press it. A sudden thought struck him.

            “I...I have a roommate,” he said. The demon--Taylor--nodded matter-of-factly.

            “Jordan Eberle.” Ryan stared, and Taylor laughed. “I could see inside your heart and soul when you first summoned me. I know all about him.”

            “All about him,” Ryan said, a feeling of dread in his stomach.

            “Yes. Including that you’re in love with him.” Ryan swallowed. “Feel glad. That’s why I can’t hurt him. Hurting him would hurt you, and I’m bound to not do that.”

            “You’re not lying to me, are you?” Ryan said suspiciously. “Like, I’m not going to break the circle and you’re going to incinerate me?”

            “I’m not, but do you really have a choice other than to find out?” This was a reasonable point. “As long as you feed me, I’ll be very cooperative.”

            “Feed you?” What the hell did demons eat? It was probably something weird like pig blood or the hearts of virgins or whatever. Maybe the demon would want to eat Sam’s heart.

            “I feed off sexual energy,” Taylor said, sounding a little exasperated with Ryan. “That’s in the goddamn spell.”

            “How do you...like, what does that involve?”

            “Fucking,” Taylor said bluntly. “That is what you brought me here for, isn’t it?” Ryan had to nod. “Don’t worry. You’ll really like it.” For some reason, that was the thing that Ryan was surest of in this whole mess.

            He glanced up at the wall clock, before jumping up. Jordan would be home in about fifteen minutes.

            “Okay,” he said, starting to clean up, first breaking the circle. “Jordan’s coming home soon. I need to find a way to break this to him gently. Go into my room and wait there.”

            “All right,” Taylor said agreeably. “Which door?” Ryan pointed, and Taylor ambled over, closing the door behind him. When he was out of sight, Ryan took a deep breath, before looking over the mess on the living room floor. Fuck, he’d have to vacuum.

 

_Jordan_            

                  All Jordan wanted was a sandwich.           

                  He'd just gotten home from work, completely exhausted but too hungry to collapse outright, and had staggered into the kitchen for something to eat, before promptly stopping short. Leaning against the counter grinning at him was possibly one of the most attractive men Jordan had ever seen. He was tall, tanned, with blond hair and blue eyes, and a gorgeous, positively obscenely full mouth that was almost nice enough to distract Jordan from his amazing body. It was very much on display, because he was wearing nothing but ridiculously tight leather pants, boots, and a collar around his neck. He also had horns. Apparently Ryan was into some kind of weird, kinky cosplay.

                  "Hi, Jordan," the guy said, smiling at him positively wickedly, and Jordan gaped.  

                   "What the..." At that moment, Ryan came into the room, wearing nothing but boxers and looking both apologetic and excited. "Ryan, who the hell is this?" Jordan demanded, trying not to sound either hurt or jealous. Based on Leather Pants's smirk, he was unsuccessful.  

                  "Um." Ryan took a deep breath. "You know that book we found? The one with the ritual in it? The one you said was total bullshit?"  

                 "Of course I--oh, my God." Jordan stared at his best friend. "You are trying to tell me that you have successfully summoned a demon?"

                 "Uh, maybe?" Ryan said nervously, and it took Jordan a few seconds to collect himself. Well, at least the horns made more sense now.

                 "And did you get the one with a great ass and dick-sucking lips on purpose?"

                 "Yeah, kinda," Ryan said with a shy grin. "He's a sex demon."

                 "He's a _what_?" Jordan yelped, and Leather Pants laughed at him. "A sex demon? God, Ryan, tell me you're kidding."

                "He's very much not kidding," the demon told Jordan. “I’m Taylor.”

            “Taylor,” Jordan said in disbelief. “You summoned a sex demon named Taylor.”

            “Well, that’s not his real name, obviously,” Ryan said, like Jordan was an idiot.

            “ _Obviously_. Seriously, Ryan, what the hell?”

            “I was lonely,” Ryan said defensively. “I was lonely, and, you know, I thought maybe--like, what did I have to lose?”

            “It could have fucking killed you, that’s what! Hell, it still could.” The thought chilled Jordan, but the demon was the next to speak.

            “I can’t hurt either of you,” he said. “It’s in the spell he used to summon me. As long as I have this on-” he said, pointing to the collar, which Jordan now saw had an elaborately carved silver ring at the front, “you’re both perfectly safe.”

            “Uh-huh,” Jordan said doubtfully. “Really. Because I read that spell too, and it says that the only person you can’t hurt is your summoner.” For some reason, this made Ryan flush bright pink. “What?”  
            “Let’s just say you missed something,” the demon said smoothly.

            “I missed something.”

            “Yeah, something big.” Taylor looked over at Ryan. “He’s not the brightest, is he?” Jordan had to take a deep breath and remind himself of all the reasons punching his friend’s recently-summoned sex demon was a terrible idea.

            “He’s freaked out,” Ryan said. “Give him time.”

            “Fine.” Taylor turned to Ryan. “I’m hungry.”

            “Demons eat?” Jordan asked before he could stop himself, out of pure curiosity, and Taylor grinned over his shoulder at him.

            “Not food.” He rested his hands on Ryan’s hips, leaning in, and Jordan dove for him, driving his shoulder into Taylor’s chest and knocking him away from Ryan down onto the kitchen tile. Fuck if he was going to let this guy eat Ryan’s soul or do whatever demons did for food.

            “Don’t fucking touch him!” Taylor picked himself up, shooting Ryan a half-amused, half-annoyed look.

            “Would you explain to your friend that I have absolutely no intention of hurting you?”

            “He said he was hungry!” Jordan protested, because maybe Ryan didn’t get the whole soul-eating bit, and Ryan rested his hand on Jordan’s shoulder.

            “He’s not going to eat my soul.”

            “Then what-”

            “He’s a sex demon. He feeds off sexual energy,” Ryan said, patiently. “He’s not going to kill me. He’s going to fuck me.”

            “He’s--oh,” Jordan said, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach. “Oh.” Ryan saw the look on his face.

            “You really don’t need to worry,” he said, apparently completely misinterpreting why Jordan was upset. “I’ll be perfectly safe.”

            “You could always join us, if you don’t believe him,” Taylor suggested, and Jordan looked over at the demon, who gave him a smug, knowing smile. He might be an unholy creature of darkness, but he wasn’t stupid. “You’ll keep your friend safe, I’ll get another person’s energy to feed off of. It’s a win-win.”

            “Fine,” Jordan said immediately, and Ryan looked at him in shock. “If it’s okay with Nuge, I mean.” Taylor turned to Ryan, arching an eyebrow, and Ryan swallowed, hard.

            “Yeah, that’s cool,” he finally said, and Taylor grinned, wide and cheerful.

            “Great.” And then he grabbed Ryan’s wrist and yanked him into a kiss. Jordan watched, spellbound, as Ryan made a noise of surprise, followed by his eyes drifting closed and his hands coming up to clutch at Taylor’s shoulders. He was swaying a little, and Jordan suspected that Taylor was mostly holding him upright. Finally, the two of them broke apart, and Taylor took a step back once he was sure Ryan was steady on his feet.

            “Want in?” he asked Jordan with that same grin, and Jordan took a deep breath, realizing that he’d been holding it while watching Ryan and Taylor kiss.

            “Sure.”

            “Come here, then,” Taylor said, and Jordan crossed the kitchen, standing there awkwardly trying not to focus on how Ryan was flushed and shaky, already looking deliciously turned on. Taylor leaned in, dotting kisses along Jordan’s jaw, his hands pushing Jordan’s shirt up so he could slide them over Jordan’s sides and back, making him shiver involuntarily. He closed his eyes, and felt Taylor kiss him lightly, just a gentle brush of his lips against Jordan’s. Then another. Jordan opened his eyes, about to tell him to fucking _do it already_ , when suddenly Taylor’s mouth came down hard on Jordan’s as he pulled him in, fitting their bodies together positively naturally, and all Jordan could do was moan and open his mouth for Taylor. He was just reaching the point where his knees weren’t working properly--seriously, holy shit, that demon could kiss--when Taylor let him go. Jordan nearly fell, and it was Ryan who caught him.

            “See?” Ryan said, laughing a bit. “See why I got him?”  
            “Yeah,” Jordan managed, trying to catch his breath. Taylor was watching them both with marked amusement.

            “Go on, then,” he said, and Jordan looked at Ryan, confused. Ryan had gone flaming red again, though.

            “Go on with what?” Jordan asked, and Taylor indicated Ryan.

            “I don’t want to do all the work here. Besides, the energy will be better if you’re both involved with each other and not just me.” Jordan looked over at Ryan in shock, wanting to see what he thought of this, and Ryan half-smiled at him.

            “Okay?” he asked, shyly, and Jordan nodded, not sure if he could talk. Ryan moved closer, his eyes wide and dark on Jordan’s, before carefully resting his hands on Jordan’s shoulders. Jordan heard Taylor yawn widely.

            “I don’t have all day, here.”

            “Shut up,” Ryan said, not looking away, and then he leaned down and pressed his lips to Jordan’s. He kissed much softer than Taylor, much more hesitantly, like he was afraid Jordan was going to pull away. Jordan, meanwhile, was trying to wrap his head around the idea that he was kissing _Ryan_ , which seemed way too much like one of his wet dreams come to life. Ryan pulled back, looking down at Jordan nervously. “You okay?” he asked, and Jordan wordlessly hooked a hand around the back of Ryan’s neck and pulled him down again, kissing him back this time. It was awkward, there was no way around it--Ryan wasn’t the best kisser, especially compared to Taylor, and it involved a lot of very sloppy tongue.

            Jordan didn’t fucking care.

            He arched up into Ryan’s body, his arms tight around Ryan’s neck, and Ryan made a soft sound of pleasure, pulling Jordan even further into him. Jordan could happily have kept on kissing Ryan for the rest of forever, but from next to him was the sound of Taylor clearing his throat.

            “When I said I didn’t want to do all the work here, I didn’t mean you guys would be having all the fun,” he said pointedly, and reluctantly Jordan pulled back, looking over at Taylor.

            “Do you have a plan, then?” he asked, trying to come off as acerbic and totally failing. Taylor nodded matter-of-factly, though.

            “Of course I do.” He walked up to the two of them, first kissing Ryan, slow and filthy, before turning and doing the same thing to Jordan. “Unzip your pants.”

            “Which of us?” Jordan asked, and Taylor kissed him lightly, nipping his bottom lip before drawing back.

            “Both of you.” Fumbling, Jordan’s hands went to his fly, managing to get it undone and his pants down to around his knees. A glance over showed that Ryan had done the same, even faster. Laughing a little, Taylor wrapped his hand around Ryan’s cock and stroked it a few times. Rather than watching that, Jordan watched Ryan’s face, the way his eyelids fell and he swallowed, hard, cheeks flushing even further. Taylor took his hand away, before turning to Jordan, taking hold of his cock in turn. Jordan’s knees nearly buckled. He didn’t want to admit it, but it had been way too long since someone else had touched his dick, and the sure, easy way Taylor was stroking him was making the world go a little wobbly. “Good?” Taylor asked lazily, and Jordan nodded. “Great.” And then he was on his knees between Jordan and Ryan. “You can make out while I do this,” he said, glancing up at the two of them. “I’d like that.” Before Jordan could say anything, or even turn and kiss Ryan, Taylor fisted a hand around Jordan’s cock at the same time as he swallowed Ryan’s down, and Jordan suddenly became much more preoccupied with keeping Ryan upright.

            “Oh, God, God, fuck, oh...” Ryan was gasping, clutching at Jordan’s shoulders, and the part of Jordan’s brain that hadn’t shorted out by then from the combination of the visual of Taylor blowing Ryan and the feeling of Taylor jacking him off was able to notice that Taylor didn’t appear to have the slightest gag reflex. Of course he didn’t. Because he was a _sex demon_.

Taylor pulled off only to frown up at the two of them.

            “Seriously, make out, would you? It’ll make this so much better.” He resumed sucking Ryan’s dick, and Jordan looked over at Ryan. His eyes were closed and he was whimpering softly. Jordan kissed him, cautious but insistent, and Ryan let Jordan in immediately, kissing him back, fervent and somehow even messier than before. It was just as wonderful. Jordan was beginning to think that this couldn’t get any better when suddenly he felt the hand around his cock vanish, only to be replaced by the feeling of Taylor’s mouth. Now Jordan was the one clinging to Ryan, nearly falling over again. He had to break the kiss to breathe, burying his face in Ryan’s neck and moaning as Taylor rubbed his tongue under the head of Jordan’s cock.

             “C’mon, Jordan, kiss me,” Ryan murmured, his voice low and rough, and Jordan got it together enough to lift his head and start kissing Ryan again. God, this all just felt too damn good. He was going to come, and soon. Suddenly, though, the slick, wet heat around his cock was gone, and Jordan whined in protest before he could stop himself.

             “Patience,” Taylor said, clearly amused, starting to stroke Jordan again. Based purely on the way Ryan shivered in his arms and moaned into the kiss, Jordan knew Taylor had resumed blowing him. Ryan was shaking by then, so caught up in the feeling he was barely able to kiss Jordan back, and Jordan trailed his mouth along Ryan’s jaw to his neck, starting to work industriously on giving him a hickey. He ran his hands over Ryan’s chest, pausing to rub a nipple with the pad of his thumb, and Ryan shuddered, crying out as he came. Jordan swore, low and fervent, glancing down as Taylor drew back, swallowing, before grinning up at him. His lips were, somehow, even more red and swollen. “You want that?” he asked, licking the head of Jordan’s cock.

              “Yeah,” Jordan managed to say, and Taylor laughed, sliding him into his mouth--all the way in, too, easy as could be. No one in their right mind would have called Jordan’s sexual experience extensive, and he had definitely never had anyone deepthroat him before. The sight and the feeling were enough to make him gasp and hold on to Ryan even tighter to stay upright. Taylor was watching him this whole time, the look in his eyes smug, and as Ryan pressed himself to Jordan’s side, nuzzling his jaw and kissing his cheek, Taylor did something with his tongue that made Jordan shout, stars winking in front of his vision. “Fuck--fuck--oh, Jesus fucking Christ-” Taylor winked at him, doing it again, and Jordan’s orgasm hit him like a Mack truck as he groaned and came in Taylor’s mouth.

            Jordan stood there, holding onto Ryan with his eyes closed and trying desperately to catch his breath, and heard Taylor get to his feet next to them.

            “Much better,” the demon said, and Jordan forced his eyes open, looking over at Taylor. He looked even more gorgeous than before; healthier, somehow. Jordan’s eyes flicked down, though, and saw the rather visible bulge at the front of his leather pants, which already didn’t hide much. Ryan saw it too.

            “What...should we do?” Ryan asked uncertainly, and Jordan shrugged, looking at Taylor for direction.

            “What do you want?”

            “Oh, you don’t want to give me that,” Taylor said with a laugh. “I’ll take a handjob.” Jordan and Ryan exchanged looks.

            “That’s not really fair,” Jordan said finally, and Ryan nodded.

            “You gave us blowjobs, we should do the same.” Taylor rolled his eyes.

            “I forgot how preoccupied humans get with _fair_.”

            “Do you want your dick sucked, or not?” Jordan snapped.

            “Go for it,” Taylor said, unfastening his pants and pulling out his cock, and now Ryan and Jordan were exchanging looks of terror. Taylor snorted. “Not so worried about _fair_ now that it’s down to it, are you?” In answer, Ryan took a step towards him, before kneeling down. He eyed Taylor’s cock up suspiciously, before leaning forward, fisting a hand around the base, and licking around the head. Taylor looked down at him, clearly pleased. “I take that back.” He extended a hand in Jordan’s direction, and somehow Jordan managed to take the few steps to cross the distance between them. Ryan had started blowing Taylor in earnest, keeping it shallow but still enthusiastic, and Jordan was momentarily distracted by that image. Taylor saw. “He looks good like that, doesn’t he?”            

            “Yeah,” Jordan said quietly. Taylor pulled him in closer, leaning down to kiss him, and Jordan went with it, shuddering a little when Taylor bit his bottom lip again. Taylor really was a fantastic kisser. There was the sound of Ryan going down too far and choking on Taylor’s cock, and Jordan broke the kiss to look and see that Ryan had pulled back, coughing. “You okay, Nuge?”

            “He’s fine,” Taylor said, and Ryan nodded to confirm this. “Jordan, I think you should spell him, though. Take a turn. Of course, you won’t do as well, but that’s okay.” Taylor was grinning at him as he said this, and Jordan knew that he was being baited. It worked, though.

            “Get up, Ryan,” Jordan said, not breaking eye contact with Taylor. “It’s my turn.”

            Jordan and Ryan switched places, and Jordan found himself staring at Taylor’s cock, trying to figure out exactly how he was going to do this. At least Taylor’s dick looked pretty normal. It wasn’t freakishly large or a funny color, and it didn’t have barbs on it or anything. He was even circumcised, which was kind of weird, but Jordan would go with it.

            “Well?” Taylor asked, looking down at him. “Are you gonna, or not?” Not breaking eye contact, Jordan licked firmly under the head, and Taylor’s breath hitched. Jordan didn’t know if that was an actual involuntary response or Taylor fucking with him, and at some level didn’t really care. Taylor had liked that. Jordan did it again, and this time Taylor moaned softly, still staring down at him.

            “Kiss him, Nuge,” Jordan said, and Ryan did so willingly as Jordan pulled up all his courage and slid Taylor’s cock into his mouth. It was immediately awkward. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with his teeth, or his tongue and lips for that matter, but then Taylor reached down and rested his hand on Jordan’s head, burying his fingers in Jordan’s hair and starting to guide him into a rhythm. Jordan let him, despite his instinctive annoyance that Taylor thought he needed more help than Ryan to suck cock, until he heard Taylor’s voice from above him.

            “Come on, Jordan, you can take more of me than that.” Jordan glanced up, and Taylor smiled at him in that smug, baiting way again. Ryan was busy mouthing at Taylor’s neck, apparently seeing if demons could get hickeys. Taking a deep breath, Jordan went down farther, cautiously but steadily, until despite his best efforts to go slow he triggered his gag reflex. Taylor only let him pull back for a few seconds before he was tugging Jordan’s head forward. “Again,” he said, and the only reason Jordan obeyed was the sound of his voice. It was rough, hoarse, aroused. Jordan sucked harder now, even more determined to make Taylor come, and he could hear that Ryan and Taylor were kissing again. Suddenly, Taylor’s fingers tensed painfully in Jordan’s hair, and Jordan took that as his cue to go as far down as he possibly could. A few seconds later, Taylor groaned and came down the back of Jordan’s throat.

            Jordan pulled back, coughing, before looking up to see that Taylor and Ryan were still kissing, slow and languid now. He wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand and got to his feet, and Taylor broke the kiss to look at Jordan appreciatively.

            “Was that your first time giving head?”

            “What do you think?” Jordan returned, and Taylor laughed. He was rubbing Ryan’s back with one hand, and Ryan was leaning into him, limp and sated. “Also, demons jizz?”

            “This body is human.” That did make sense. It was really sad, that any of this was making any sort of sense, but it was.

            “You could have warned me.”

            “You might have stopped,” Taylor said calmly, and Jordan considered punching him again. He saw Ryan hide a smile.

            “Be nice,” Ryan said to Taylor, who made a big show of rolling his eyes.

            “Fine.” It was then that Jordan caught sight of the clock.

            “Fuck, it’s late.” Now that the adrenaline of having a demon in his kitchen was wearing off, he found himself growing tired again.

            “Go to bed,” Ryan said. “Taylor, do demons sleep?”

            “Nope.”

            “Well, we’ve got to. Amuse yourself until we wake up, okay?”

            “I will be sure to do that,” Taylor said, his voice innocent, and Jordan rolled his eyes.

            “Don’t get arrested.” He looked over at Ryan. “See you tomorrow.”

            “Yeah,” Ryan said, flushing a bit. Jordan figured that probably had something to do with the prolonged makeout session they’d just had. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be too weird in the morning. “Night.”

            The next morning, Jordan woke up and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a few minutes. He’d had the weirdest dream. Ryan had summoned a sex demon with a profoundly un-demonic name and they’d all hooked up in the kitchen. Yeah, it had to have been a dream. That was too weird to possibly be reality.

            He staggered out into the living room, and promptly stopped short. Ryan and Taylor were sitting on the couch, Ryan’s _Magic_ deck on the coffee table, and it looked like Ryan was trying to teach Taylor the basics of the game.

            “See, if you play this card then-” Ryan glanced up as Jordan came into the room, and promptly went bright pink again. “Hi.”

            “It was real,” Jordan said before he could stop himself, and Taylor laughed at him.

            “Very much so.” Deciding to go about his morning as normally as possible, Jordan went into the kitchen to make himself a bowl of cereal.

            “You eat anyone’s soul while we were sleeping?” he asked casually as he poured the milk, and Ryan gasped.

            “Jordan!”

            “It’s fine. I did not,” Taylor said, and he sounded much more amused than offended. “You two gave me more than enough food. For last night, anyway.”

            “What does that mean?” Jordan asked.

            “I’ll be hungry again by this evening,” Taylor said with a wolfish grin. “You might want to buy lube, if that’s not a thing you two keep around.”

            “Lube,” Jordan managed. “For what?”

            “Buttsex,” Taylor said casually. “Ryan’s going to fuck me.”

            “What?” Ryan yelped as Jordan choked on his bite of cereal, and Taylor glanced over at him.

            “Is that a problem?”

            “Ah, uh, no, but-”

            “Great. Bring some lube home with you.” Taylor looked over at Jordan, who was still trying to breathe normally again. “Don’t worry, you’ll get something out of it too.”

            “That wasn’t what I was worried about,” Jordan coughed, and Taylor laughed.

            Work that day seemed to drag on even more than usual. The moment Jordan’s replacement showed up, he punched his timecard and was out of the 7-11 like a bat out of hell. He got back to the apartment to find that Ryan wasn’t there, and Taylor was sitting on the couch watching reruns of _Law and Order_.

            “You figure out who did it yet?” Jordan asked as he hung up his coat.

            “Within the first five minutes.” Taylor pointed at a blonde woman on the screen. “It was the wife.”

            “It always is. Where’s Ryan?”  
            “Grocery store. He said you were out of Ramen.” Jordan snorted, taking a seat on the couch next to Taylor. “How was work?”

            “Boring.” They sat in oddly companionable silence for a while, watching the TV show. Taylor seemed amusingly focused on the screen, and Jordan watched him out of the corner of his eye. “Do they not have cable where you come from?”

            “They didn’t have this last time I was on the human plane,” Taylor said, and Jordan felt his jaw drop.

            “The last time? You’ve done this before?”

            “It was a long time ago.” Taylor didn’t sound very interested in continuing this conversation. The front door banged open, and Ryan came through, carrying a grocery bag and a half-gallon of milk.

            “Hey,” he said, walking into the kitchen and starting to put the groceries away. “I got spaghetti and sauce for dinner.”  
            “Sounds good.”

            “And then I can have dinner, right?” Taylor said innocently, looking over at Ryan, who smiled nervously at him.

            “Definitely. I also got lube.”

            “Ryan, put the water on to boil,” Jordan said, not looking away from the TV. “We’re both hungry.” Laughing, Ryan did as Jordan said.

            Ryan and Jordan both bolted down their spaghetti, eating it on the couch while Taylor was engrossed in an episode of _NCIS_ , and as soon as they both finished Jordan got up to put the plates in the sink. When he turned around, it was to see that Ryan and Taylor were already making out, and he had to smile.

            “I know you two are eager to, uh, get down to business, but if you try to fuck on the couch it might fall apart,” Jordan pointed out. Reluctantly, Ryan broke the kiss and sat up. His hair was sticking up from having Taylor’s hands in it, and Jordan was pretty sure that was a bite mark on his neck. He felt a lick of jealousy in his stomach, and pushed back at it. That was really dumb. Taylor sat up too, looking over at Jordan.

            “Let’s go to bed, then,” he suggested, and Jordan nodded.

            “Let’s.”

            It turned out that without the leather pants and boots, Taylor was even more painfully attractive. He sprawled out on the bed, legs apart and hands behind his head, watching Jordan and Ryan as they undressed. Jordan was wondering why Taylor had told him to take his clothes off too, since it wasn’t like he’d be doing the fucking, but he figured the likelihood of someone touching his dick was exponentially increased by doing what Taylor said.

            “You look really good naked,” Taylor said to Jordan. “As good as Ryan.” Jordan tried not to look as flattered as he was. Well, at least all those hours of running and weightlifting had paid off.

            “Thanks,” he finally said, and Ryan snorted, kicking his jeans off his ankle.

            “You’ve just made his month.” Jordan felt himself blush, and Taylor grinned at him, lifting a hand and beckoning to Jordan.

            “Come here.” Jordan followed orders, getting on the bed next to Taylor. He was about to ask if this meant Taylor was going to blow him again when Taylor picked up the bottle of lube sitting on the mattress and handed it to him, before getting up on his hands and knees. Behind him, Jordan heard the sound of Ryan inhaling sharply.

            “You want me to fuck you?” Jordan asked, because that was definitely not the plan he’d heard before.

            “No. I want you to finger me open,” Taylor said, giving Jordan that gorgeous, wicked smile again. “Ryan’s going to do the fucking, but I thought you might like to do more than just sit and watch. Unless you’d rather not.”

            “Um. Okay?” Jordan said uncertainly, because he was barely experienced enough at straight sex to do it without feeling nervous, let alone anything to do with assfucking. There were footsteps, and then Ryan was standing next to the bed, rubbing his hand over Jordan’s back. He was naked too, and Jordan was almost more in awe of him than he was of Taylor.

            “You better hurry up and do it,” Ryan said to Jordan, “before I just up and come from thinking about fucking him.”

            “I do have that effect on people,” Taylor said, and Jordan was pretty sure he wasn’t kidding. Hands shaking, he uncapped the lube, pouring what was probably way too much on his fingers and getting even more on the bedsheets. Whatever, Ryan had gotten a big bottle. “You can start with two,” Taylor told him, and obediently, Jordan pressed two fingers inside. Taylor made a soft, pleased noise, closing his eyes for a moment as if to savor the sensation.

            “Like this?” Jordan asked nervously, keeping up an easy, slow slide of his fingers in and out. Ryan got in the bed on the other side, sprawling out next to Taylor and running his fingers along the groove of Taylor’s spine.

            “You don’t need to be so gentle,” Taylor told him. “You can’t hurt me, even if you tried, and I want you to find my prostate in this next century.”

            “Where is-”

            “Just go deeper and start scissoring your fingers. You’ll know when you hit it.” Jordan did what Taylor said, watching the way Taylor was shifting a little now, how his cock was hard and his breath was quickening. Jordan tried a new movement of his fingers, and suddenly Taylor moaned, loudly, pushing back towards Jordan’s hand. Jordan gulped, suddenly dizzy.

            “Is that it?”

            “Fuck yes,” Taylor said hoarsely. Experimentally, Jordan pressed there again, and Taylor’s head dropped as he made a sound so patently sexual Jordan had to bite back a whimper of his own in response. Jordan glanced over at Ryan, to see that he was watching this tableau out of wide eyes, his pupils blown out and high color on his cheeks. He looked about as hard as Jordan was, which was to say painfully so. “Add a third finger and finish up, would you?” Taylor said, glancing over his shoulder at Jordan. “It’s not nice to keep Ryan waiting.”  
            “Yeah,” Jordan said weakly, slipping in a third finger. He pushed in deep again, trying to stretch Taylor out as well as he could, but barely thirty seconds later Taylor spoke again, his voice positively _ragged_.

            “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m ready, do it.” Jordan pulled his fingers out and awkwardly slid over on the bed so Ryan, who looked both unbearably turned on and completely petrified, could kneel behind Taylor. The demon looked over his shoulder again at Ryan. “Come on, Ryan,” he said, sounding a touch breathless. Jordan found himself wondering if that was an affect to make the two of them relax a little, or if Taylor was genuinely that into things. “Fuck me.”

            “Jesus,” Ryan said faintly, squinting his eyes shut and taking a deep breath. “Okay.” Jordan watched as Ryan lined himself up and then slowly started to push in. Taylor hummed happily, a sound that turned to a soft moan as Ryan bottomed out and stopped. Ryan was panting so hard Jordan was momentarily worried he was having some kind of asthma attack, his eyes closed, his fingers tight on Taylor’s hips.

            “Ryan?” Taylor asked, looking back at him with a smirk. “Don’t hyperventilate. At least, don’t hyperventilate before you make me come.”

            “Okay,” Ryan said weakly, but he still didn’t move.

            “Go on,” Taylor prompted. “We must be boring poor Jordan. Give him a nice show.” The grin Taylor shot in Jordan’s direction, though, said clearly that he was fully aware Jordan was utterly riveted by the two of them, even like this. Muttering something inaudible to himself, Ryan started to move, first slowly, cautiously. “You’re not going to hurt me, now fuck me,” Taylor told him. Ryan swore loudly, but he did quicken his pace, and suddenly Taylor shouted something in a language Jordan didn’t understand, a shudder going down his spine. Ryan froze.

            “Taylor?”  
            “Okay, you know how I’m not allowed to hurt you? If you stop again, fuck that, I’ll eat your soul with pleasure,” Taylor growled, and Ryan managed a half of a laugh before resuming. Now Taylor was the one muttering inaudibly under his breath, eyes half open, guttural sounds of pleasure coming out of him every time Ryan thrust in.

            “Taylor--I can’t--I’m gonna-” Ryan bit out.

            “Go ahead,” Taylor said raggedly, and that seemed to be all the permission Ryan needed because two seconds later he shoved back in, froze, and groaned. Shaking, he pulled out, before collapsing down onto the mattress. Taylor rolled over onto his back, spreading his legs and looking up at Jordan. “Finish what you started?” he asked, and Jordan was already fumbling around for the lube. He didn’t bother the slightest bit with delicacy or caution this time, instead just pushing three fingers deep into Taylor, trying to remember where he’d found his prostate before. When he hit it, Taylor moaned something in whatever language he’d been speaking before, and Jordan just pressed harder with every push of his fingers, watching as Taylor writhed on the bed, making sounds that were growing progressively less human. If he was faking his desperation, he was doing a damn fine job of it.

            “Can you come like this?” Jordan asked, and Taylor nodded, looking up at Jordan. His eyes seemed even brighter blue than before, almost like they were glowing.

            “If you-- _ohh_...yes, like that, just like that, harder, harder,” he begged as Jordan tried crooking his fingers against that spot. The mattress shifted as Ryan sprawled out next to the two of them, starting to kiss along Taylor’s collarbone, up his neck, along his jaw, biting his earlobe.

            “If I what?” Jordan asked, amused, even though he was so hard it was a miracle he was still upright. He was never to find out what that _if_ was, though, because Ryan reached between them to fist his hand around Taylor’s cock. It took two pulls for Taylor’s back to arch up as he came, gasping something incoherent, before collapsing limply onto the mattress. Gasping a little himself, Jordan pulled his fingers out and reached for his own cock, and the next thing he knew Ryan sprawled out half across Taylor, completely ignoring the cum covering his chest, knocked Jordan’s hand away, and wrapped his lips around Jordan’s cock. “Oh, Christ,” Jordan groaned, and Ryan promptly fell into a quick, hard rhythm. It was shallow and messy and not a very good blowjob, especially compared to Taylor’s the night before, and Jordan came so quickly it would have been positively humiliating if he’d had any higher brain functioning left.

            As soon as Ryan pulled back, Jordan slumped down to the mattress next to Taylor, lying there on his side trying to catch his breath. Ryan was still sprawled out across Taylor’s chest, looking adorably blissed out, and as soon as Jordan had collected himself a little he looked at the demon, who had been suspiciously quiet ever since he’d come. Instead of causing trouble, though, Taylor was lying there on his back, one hand buried in Ryan’s hair with his fingernails scratching his scalp. His eyes were closed and he had a slightly dreamy smile on his face that matched Ryan’s.

            “If you want to cuddle, Jordan, that’s okay,” Taylor said, not opening his eyes. Somewhat reluctantly, because while he really did want to cuddle that desire was pretty embarrassing, Jordan rolled over so he was pressed up against Taylor’s chest.

            “I didn’t know demons cuddled,” he said, and Taylor slid his arm around Jordan’s shoulders, starting to run his fingertips lightly up and down Jordan’s bicep.

            “Humans like it.” Jordan’s spine stiffened a little, because he didn’t want to do this just because Taylor thought he needed some kind of physical reassurance, but then Taylor turned and kissed the top of his head. “It’s growing on me, personally.” Jordan opened his eyes to glance down at Ryan.

            “Is he asleep?”

            “I think so.”

            “No’m not,” Ryan mumbled. “Yet.”  
            “Maybe you should shower first?” Jordan suggested. “I think it’s gonna get sticky soon.”

            “I’m comfy,” Ryan said, nestling even further into Taylor’s chest. “Don’t wanna.”

            “He’s right,” Taylor said, gently pushing at Ryan’s shoulder. “Itchy, too.”

            “Go shower, we’ll take turns,” Jordan told him, because their shower was barely big enough to fit one of them at a time, let alone three relatively large men. Reluctantly, Ryan got up, staggering out of his bedroom and down the hall towards the bathroom. Jordan watched him leave with some interest; Ryan hadn’t pulled on any clothes before leaving.

            “He’s got a great ass, doesn’t he?” Taylor said, reading Jordan’s mind.

            “Yeah.” Taylor looked around the room they were in.

            “This is Ryan’s bedroom, right?”  
            “Oh, yeah.” Jordan’s was both way more of a mess and had a higher concentration of _Star Trek_ posters. Ryan liked _Star Trek_ , but not with the same fervent adoration that Jordan did. Jordan had still managed to talk him into going to Edmonton’s upcoming sci-fi con with him as Kirk and Spock.

            The con. _Shit_.

            “What’s wrong?” Taylor asked, apparently noticing the way Jordan’s back had stiffened again.

            “Nothing,” Jordan said, relaxing and kissing Taylor’s chest absently. He needed to talk to Ryan about this before mentioning it to Taylor.

            “Well, what’s the problem?” Jordan had cornered Ryan in the kitchen the next morning, while Taylor was watching _Matlock_ , and Ryan was looking at him like he was making a huge deal out of nothing.

            “What’s the problem? We can’t just leave him here! God only knows what he would do to the apartment.”

            “Jesus Christ, Jordan, he’s a demon, not a puppy,” Ryan said impatiently. “I think he’d be okay.”  
            “I just don’t want to come home and discover he’s fucked someone in my bed.” Or, for that matter, eaten someone’s soul in their living room. Either thing was a strong possibility, as far as Jordan was concerned, and would be equally difficult to clean up.

            “Then we’ll take him with us,” Ryan said, like it was obvious. “He’s got a ready-made costume, anyway, with the horns and everything.”

            “Take him with us?”

            “Yeah, he’d love it. Lots of people wandering around in leather shit, it’s right up his alley.”

            “What’s right up my alley?” Taylor asked, not looking away from the TV, and Jordan and Ryan exchanged looks.

            “We’re going to take you to a science fiction convention,” Ryan said finally, and Taylor shrugged. He was still focused on the TV.

            “Okay.”

            “See?” Ryan said to Jordan. “That was easy. Now you just have to find the money for his ticket.”  
            “I am not paying for your sex demon’s con ticket! That’s, like, fifty bucks!”

            “It’s not like he hasn’t been fucking you too,” Ryan pointed out. “Also, you have an actual job.”

            “I cannot believe you think working at a 7-11 is an actual job.”

            “Do you want him to come with us, or not?” Ryan returned, and Jordan sighed.

            “ _Fine_.”

            It was Jordan’s day off, and Ryan didn’t have any classes on Saturdays, so they spent most of the morning lying on the sofa watching TV with Taylor. Somehow, they ended up all on top of each other, Ryan’s head in Taylor’s lap and Taylor leaning into Jordan’s chest with Jordan’s arm around his shoulders. They’d found a _Law and Order: SVU_ marathon, and Taylor was watching it intently, his total attention on the screen. It was strangely endearing.

            “So they didn’t have TV when you were here last,” Jordan said during a commercial, and Taylor shook his head.

            “No.”

            “They didn’t?” Ryan asked. “When were you here last?”  
            “1591,” Taylor replied. Ryan sat up, looking at Taylor in surprise.

            “1591.”

            “Yes.” Taylor’s voice was oddly flat.

            “Where?” Jordan asked, rubbing Taylor’s shoulder with one hand, almost as if to comfort him. That was weird, because one of them was a demon and one of them was Jordan, but it had been automatic.

            “Florence.” Jordan and Ryan stared at him. Taylor arched an eyebrow. “Italy?”

            “We know where Florence is,” Ryan told him. “You were in Florence in 1591?”

            “Didn’t you hear me speaking Tuscan last night in bed?”

            “I thought that was some weird demon language,” Jordan said honestly, and Taylor cracked up. “What?”  
            “I wouldn’t speak a demonic language to either of you. I want you both to still have eardrums.”

            “Thanks,” Jordan said dryly, making Ryan laugh nervously.

            “You’re welcome. Anyway, I like Tuscan. It’s a much sexier language than English. More suited to dirty talk.” Taylor glanced up at the TV, to see that the commercials were over, and Jordan smiled a little as Taylor leaned back into his chest, once more focused on the TV. Jordan waited until the next commercial break to ask his question.

            “Who summoned you, in Florence?”

            “His name was Stefano Balducci,” Taylor answered, his voice once more possessing a curious and slightly unsettling flatness. “He was a well-known occultist in the city, and he had a fondness for young teenage boys. That was the form I took.”

            “Wait, so you didn’t look like this?” Taylor smiled at Ryan’s question.

            “He wouldn’t have liked me nearly so much.”

            “Did you like him?” Jordan questioned, not sure why he was waiting with bated breath for Taylor’s response.

            “Not in the least. He was a disgusting man, hairy, with bad teeth. He reeked of bad breath and wine, and he wasn’t even kind to make up for it. He provided me with energy to feed off of, though, and passed me around to his friends as well.”

            “That’s horrible,” Ryan said, looking upset by the idea, but Taylor shrugged.

            “It was food. I could have left whenever I wanted, the spell wasn’t keeping me there or anything.”

            “Did you leave, eventually?” Ryan asked.

            “Yes.” There was a pause.

            “Why?” Jordan finally said, and Taylor smiled faintly.

            “Balducci was a pig, but he wasn’t a violent pig. One of his friends was, and apparently was not intelligent enough to realize that mistreating a demon is never a good idea, even if that demon looks like a twelve-year-old boy.” There was another pause, during which Jordan and Ryan exchanged shocked looks.

            “Did you kill the guy, or something?” Ryan asked.

            “I did. Then, I left the human plane, and didn’t take human form again until you summoned me here.” Taylor glanced away from the TV to see the way Jordan and Ryan were both sitting there silently staring at him. “If you didn’t want to know, you shouldn’t have asked.” He sounded a little annoyed with both of them.

            “No--it’s not that,” Jordan said quickly. “I just--we just-”

            “Do you like us?” Ryan blurted out, and Jordan saw that Taylor understood.

            “ _Sono contento mi hai portato qui_ ,” Taylor said, his voice strangely warm. “ _Mi piace fare gemere, e il truo amico, troppo_.” Ryan and Jordan stared at him in confusion.

            “What does that mean?” Ryan finally asked, and Taylor leaned forward to kiss him lightly.

            “I said that I was happy you brought me here, and that I like making you moan.” He turned to kiss Jordan. “And your friend, too.”

            “Oh,” Ryan said on an exhale, and next thing Jordan knew he’d climbed onto Taylor’s lap, straddling his thighs, cupped Taylor’s face in his hands and kissed him. Taylor’s eyes slipped closed as he started to kiss Ryan back, and Jordan sat there awkwardly, not entirely sure what to do. Figuring eventually that the fact Ryan and Taylor were making out like he wasn’t there meant that he should probably leave, he stood up, but then Taylor reached out and grabbed Jordan’s wrist to keep him from walking away.

            “Where are you going?” he asked, tilting his head slightly so Ryan could lick and bite along his neck.

            “I was gonna leave you two-” Jordan began, because Taylor was Ryan’s sex demon, not his, and maybe Ryan didn’t want him around all the time when they fucked.

            “Don’t be stupid, Jordan,” Ryan said, not even bothering to look up at him as he worried a spot on Taylor’s neck.

            “Yeah, I’m not, I’m just-” Sighing, Ryan pulled back, rolled off Taylor, and then promptly slid off the couch and onto his knees in front of Jordan, who made a strangled noise of shock.

            “Excuse me for a second,” Ryan said over his shoulder to Taylor, and then his hands went to the waistband of Jordan’s pajama pants, tugging them down to around his ankles.

            “Oh, don’t worry,” Taylor said, putting his hands behind his head and leaning back to watch with a grin. “This is an acceptable interruption.” Ryan had curled his hand around Jordan’s cock now and was stroking it to bring it to full hardness, although that wasn’t going to be the slightest bit of a problem in a second just from the _thought_ of Ryan blowing him.

            “We always want you with us,” Ryan said, leaning forward and swirling his tongue around the tip of Jordan’s cock. Jordan choked down a truly embarrassing whimper. “Don’t we, Taylor?”

            “Oh, yeah,” Taylor agreed. “It’s so much better with both of you, you have no idea.”

            “ _Guh_ ,” Jordan managed helplessly, because Ryan had taken him into his mouth by then and was busily engaged in blowing him. He might not be as technically skilled as Taylor, but he was definitely as enthusiastic.

            “Go a little slower, Ryan,” Taylor instructed. “Make him wait for it.” Obligingly, Ryan slowed down, and Jordan made an incoherent noise of protest. Taylor laughed at him. “Impatient, aren’t you?”

            “Shut up,” Jordan managed. “Feels amazing.” Taylor nodded.

            “I know.” Jordan had a half-formed thought in his brain about how Taylor could feel his sexual energy or whatever, and if that was what he meant, when Ryan looked up at him just as he curled his tongue around the head of Jordan’s cock. Jordan moaned, shakily but loudly, and Ryan did it again, before drawing back to start licking, not breaking eye contact. Jordan had to close his eyes and concentrate on his breathing, because otherwise he was fairly sure he’d come on Ryan’s face, and that was too filthy to do to his best friend, as pretty as that picture would be. Ryan didn’t stop, though, licking delicately at the head of Jordan’s cock, mouthing at his balls, sucking lightly on the tip, like he had all the time in the world to tease Jordan.

            “Nuge--Ryan, I--I’m gonna come,” Jordan gasped, because Ryan probably had no idea how close Jordan was to embarrassing himself. Ryan didn’t even pause. “No, seriously, I’m-”

            “He wants to come on your face, Ryan,” Taylor said from the couch. “Is that all right by you?” That got Ryan to pause, looking up at Jordan out of wide, shocked eyes. Jordan tried to find his voice, shoving aside the question of how Taylor had known that.

            “I--no, I don’t--I mean, I _do_ , but I wouldn’t-” And then Ryan leaned forward and licked a stripe up the underside of Jordan’s cock, and Jordan broke off on a whimper as his hands clenched into tight fists. That just wasn’t fucking _fair_.

            “C’mon, Jordan, do it then,” Ryan said with a wicked grin he must have learned from Taylor, closing his eyes and starting to jack Jordan with one hand, and Jordan just couldn’t hold himself together any longer. He came, swearing fervently, on Ryan’s face, and behind him he heard Taylor bite out an equally fervent curse in Tuscan.

            Ryan opened his eyes, looking up at Jordan with a faint smile, lips red and swollen and cum all over his face. He looked like a figure out of one of Jordan’s most private and obscene fantasies, the sort of things he came up with curled up in his bed alone late at night but never dreamed could actually happen. Wobbily, Ryan got to his feet, and Jordan cast around before grabbing a few Kleenex from the box on the coffee table and starting to carefully clean Ryan up. Once he was done, he dropped the tissues on the floor, before glancing over his shoulder at Taylor. The demon was sitting on the couch with his pants open and his cock out, stroking it slowly as he watched the two of them.

            “I’m okay,” he said, seeing Jordan’s look. “Take care of him.” Jordan turned back to Ryan, who looked positively dazed with arousal, and promptly knelt down in front of him, trying to ignore the way his heart was in his throat. He’d done this for Taylor, so this shouldn’t be any different, even though it was Ryan who was already panting as he tugged down his pajama bottoms.

            Carefully, deliberately, he slid Ryan’s cock into his mouth, but any care or deliberateness instantly went out the window when Ryan moaned like he was dying and fisted his hand in Jordan’s hair. Suddenly, all in the world Jordan wanted was to make Ryan lose it as thoroughly as he had. He’d even willingly take a facial if that was what Ryan wanted. Jordan started to take him deeper on every bob of his head, determined to at least do as well for Ryan as he had for Taylor, and now Ryan was groaning, saying Jordan’s name over and over like it was the only word he could remember. Jordan tried to mimic that tongue trick Taylor had used on him, and apparently he was successful, because Ryan nearly yanked Jordan’s hair out by the roots as he gasped and came in Jordan’s mouth without even warning him.

            Coughing a little, Jordan rocked back, looking up at Ryan, who was staring down at him with high color in his cheeks, looking totally shellshocked. Jordan got to his feet, turning to Taylor, only to see that the demon was slumped back against their couch cushions, cum all over his chest and stomach and a sated look on his face. Ryan pulled up his pajama pants and collapsed on the couch next to Taylor, Jordan did the same on Taylor’s other side, and they all lay there in comfortable, satisfied silence for a long time. Taylor was the one to break it.

            “Holy shit, you two are hot,” he said, sounding both pleased and slightly bemused by this. Jordan and Ryan promptly high-fived over Taylor, which made him laugh. “I mean it. That was incredible to watch.”

            “Thanks.” Jordan looked over at Taylor, remembering an earlier question. “How did you know I wanted to come on his face?”  
            “Because if I was in your situation, that’s exactly what I’d want.”

            “So you can’t, like, read my mind or anything?”  
            “Not exactly,” Taylor said with a wide grin, and Jordan blinked.

            “What does _not exactly_ mean?”

            “It means I can’t technically, but I’m not stupid.” The pointed look Taylor gave Ryan was enough to demonstrate exactly what he meant by that, and Jordan gulped. Even if he had just given Ryan a facial, he did not want Ryan to know that he was completely head-over-heels in love with him. “You should thank Ryan, though. He took it very well.”

            “Nearly creamed my fucking pants,” Ryan mumbled. He was curled up under Taylor’s arm, head resting on his chest and eyes closed. “Sorry I didn’t warn you when I came.”  
            “I’ll survive,” Jordan said. “Look, Taylor, there’s a new episode of _SVU_ on.”

            “Really?” Taylor asked, perking up, and Ryan laughed, snuggling in closer.

            “Clean the cum off your stomach and we’ll watch it.”

            The next two weeks went better than Jordan could possibly have hoped. While the weirdness of having a demon in their apartment never really went away, Taylor inserted himself neatly into their lives, and when they weren’t fucking, seemed perfectly content to sit around and watch crime dramas on TV and occasionally accompany Jordan or Ryan on an errand (he wore one of Ryan’s sweatshirts to cover his chest and one of Jordan’s old beanie hats to cover the horns). In fact, he caused startlingly little real trouble, which Jordan credited to the fact that they had been keeping him very, very well-fed. He and Ryan were learning a whole slate of Tuscan swear words, and while Jordan was a little fuzzy on the meanings of most of them, he knew that when Taylor yelled “ _Cazzo_!” Jordan should do whatever he’d just done again. The three of them were hooking up every day, sometimes more than once, and Jordan was growing almost skilled at blowjobs. He’d even gotten to fuck Taylor, once, and had miraculously managed to last long enough to make Taylor come with Jordan inside of him.

             The Friday before the con, Jordan had the day off again, and he spent the day getting his and Ryan’s costumes ready while Ryan was in class. This involved a trip to a nearby drugstore, and because he was still a little wary about leaving a demon alone in their apartment if he didn’t have to, Taylor ended up coming along. He, of course, was totally fascinated by the store.

            “Okay.” Jordan looked down at his shopping list, before casting around the store. “Come on, we need an eyeliner pencil.”

            “Eyeliner pencil?” Taylor trailed after Jordan as they went into the cosmetics section.

            “Yeah, for Ryan’s eyebrows.” Jordan studied the shelves, trying to figure out which pencil was the cheapest, and when he turned around it was to see that Taylor was opening a tube of red lipstick and drawing strange and intricate designs over his hands. “Stop that!” Taylor looked up at him with wide eyes, the picture of innocence.

            “Stop what?”

            “Put the lipstick down,” Jordan said firmly. “You’ll ruin it, and then I’ll have to pay for it, and then I will be seriously pissed at you.” Taylor made a great show of sighing, but he did put the lipstick down. “Thank you.” Jordan grabbed what looked like the cheapest dark brown eyeliner pencil and hustled Taylor away from the makeup before he decided it was a good idea to slap on some eyeshadow or blush or something.

            Jordan found everything else on his list easily, but not before Taylor managed to sweet-talk Jordan into buying him some rose-scented shower gel.

            “What could you possibly want this for?” Jordan asked when Taylor showed it to him.

            “It smells nice,” Taylor said. “Like flowers. Flowers are nice. There aren’t any around here, I kind of miss them.”

            “We’re in Edmonton in fucking January, of course there aren’t any flowers.” Taylor just looked at him, eyes big and sad, and Jordan groaned, before grabbing the bottle of shower gel and dropping it into his basket. It was $3.99, he could afford that to placate his best friend’s sex demon. “There. Okay?” Taylor smiled at Jordan, looking genuinely happy, and Jordan rolled his eyes, trying not to smile back. It would only encourage Taylor.

             The cashier’s eyebrows nearly lifted into her hairline as she rung up their purchases. It was probably not every day that she saw a shopping basket containing eyeliner, glue, the largest bottle of lube the drugstore carried, rose shower gel, and a bag of Doritos. Jordan’s attempt to act cool about it was not helped when Taylor wandered up behind him, smelling like he’d taken a bath in perfume testers and holding the beanie in one lipstick-covered hand. The cashier gaped openmouthed at him, and Jordan didn’t blame her.

            “Getting ready for the convention this weekend,” Jordan hurriedly explained. “He’s trying out his costume.”

            “I see,” the cashier said skeptically, and Jordan had never been gladder to get the fuck out of a store in his _life_.

            “I told you to keep the goddamn hat on!” he lit into Taylor on the walk home.

            “It was itchy.”

            “It was itchy. Right. Yeah. Also, God, what the fuck did you spray on yourself? You smell like a bordello.”

            “No, I don’t. Bordellos smell way different.” Jordan was about to argue, before he realized that while he had never been in a bordello, the likelihood that Taylor had was very high.

            “You’re taking a shower as soon as we get home. You can use your new shower gel.” Jordan was not a big fan of the smell of roses, since it was uncomfortably similar to a perfume his grandmother used, but pretty much anything would be better than the way Taylor smelled right then.

            “Are you mad at me?” Taylor asked him, and Jordan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

            “Would you really care if I was?”

            “Yes.” Jordan’s head snapped up to look at him. Taylor was perfectly serious.

            “I’m still going to sleep with you, no matter what,” Jordan said, because Taylor was probably just thinking about his food supply, but Taylor shook his head.

            “I’m not worried about that.”

            “Then what is it?”  
            “You and Ryan, you’ve been very good to me,” Taylor said, his voice serious and honest. “Not just sexually. You’ve been kind, and you didn’t have to be, especially you since you didn’t choose to bring me here. If you’re mad at me, I did something that truly upset you, and I don’t want to do that without a good reason. Not with how you’ve treated me. That isn’t very fair.” Jordan let this digest as they walked a block or so.

            “I thought it was humans who were preoccupied with _fair_ ,” he said finally, and Taylor shrugged.

            “Demons have our own rules of what’s fair and what isn’t.” He and Jordan were stopped at a crosswalk, looking at each other. “Why are you mad?” Jordan closed his eyes for a second, taking a deep breath.

            “Let’s talk about this inside,” he said, and Taylor followed him across the street and into the apartment.

            Ryan wasn’t home yet, and Jordan hung up his coat, before turning to Taylor, who had been waiting silently for him to talk again.

            “Shower first,” Jordan said. “You’re giving me an asthma attack, and I don’t even have asthma. Here’s your shower gel, go on.” Without saying a word, Taylor did what Jordan said.

            When he emerged from the shower five minutes later, hair damp and a towel around his hips, Jordan came out of the kitchen where he’d been making himself a sandwich. They looked at each other for a long moment.

            “Why are you mad?” Taylor repeated finally, and Jordan sighed, thinking about the right way to phrase this, how to say it in a way Taylor would understand.

            “Here’s the thing,” Jordan said. “You scare the shit out of me, Taylor, do you get that?” Taylor frowned.

            “I can’t hurt you, and I can’t hurt Ryan. Why are you-”

            “There are six billion other people on this planet who you _could_ hurt,” Jordan told him. “Hurting any of them would hurt me. Not to mention the shitshow that would happen if anyone ever discovered what you are. You scare me. I didn’t tell you to wear the goddamn hat because I’m paranoid, okay? I had a very good reason. I want to keep you safe, and Ryan too.”

            “You want to keep me safe.” Taylor said this like it was a completely foreign concept to him.

            “Yes.”

            “You were angry with me because you felt that I had put myself in danger.”

            “Now you’re getting it.”

            “Oh,” Taylor said. He was still frowning in confusion. “If anyone discovers the truth about me, I’ll just kill them.”

            “Oh, God, no, no,” Jordan said, feeling suddenly nauseous. “Please. Don’t kill anyone, ever, okay? Please, Taylor.”

            “But you just said-”

            “If you kill anyone, I am never touching your cock again,” Jordan said flatly. “I don’t care who dies or how terrible they were. I am not going to be complicit in harboring a murderer.” There was another silence, during which Taylor evaluated Jordan closely and Jordan tried not to look nervous. “Taylor?”

            “Does Ryan feel this way?” Taylor asked him.

            “Talk to him, but I’m pretty sure he would agree.”

            “Probably,” Taylor agreed. “He is also very human.”

            “Are you going to leave, now?” Jordan asked, trying not to sound petrified. “I mean, please don’t, but if you think you-”

            In two strides, Taylor dropped the towel and crossed the room to Jordan, yanking him into his arms, tilting his face up with one hand and kissing him so hard Jordan’s knees buckled. Taylor held him upright as he shoved Jordan up against the nearest wall so he could more effectively ravage him, tearing off Jordan’s T-shirt, fumbling with the zipper of his jeans. It got stuck halfway down, and Taylor growled in frustration, yanking hard enough to break it so he could get Jordan’s jeans off. He didn’t sound very human at that moment.

            “Taylor--what-” Jordan choked out, and Taylor kissed him again, his hands running over Jordan’s chest, his touch rough but sure. He palmed Jordan’s cock through his boxers, and Jordan bit his bottom lip, his head falling back to hit the wall with a dull _thud_.

            “I want to fuck you,” Taylor said, his voice low, and the little air that was left in Jordan’s lungs after those kisses was gone in a rush.

            “I--I-” Taylor rocked back, looking down at him with a frown.

            “No?” Jordan closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. The only things that were stopping him were his own fears; Ryan and Taylor had fucked plenty of times when Jordan was away at work, he was pretty sure Ryan wouldn’t mind in the least if he and Taylor hooked up on their own. The idea of having someone’s dick in his ass, on the other hand, was petrifying. Taylor seemed to see. He leaned in, starting to kiss along Jordan’s neck as his hand moved back to cup Jordan’s growing erection, starting to gently massage it. “It’ll feel so good, Jordan,” he said in Jordan’s ear, as Jordan clung to his shoulders and did his best to stay upright. “Me inside you. We’ll go slow, or at least, we will until you’re begging for my cock. Which I can promise you, you will be.” Jordan whimpered, burying his face in Taylor’s neck. “I want to show you this. I want to finger you open, make you scream when I find your prostate. Maybe I’ll rim you first. Then I’ll fuck you, make you come just from my cock inside you, make you come out of your skin from pleasure.” Jordan whimpered again. He was shaking all over from the very idea. “Tell me yes, Jordan.”

            “Y-yes,” Jordan managed to say. Next thing he knew, Taylor had picked him up in his arms and carried him into his bedroom, dropping him on the bed. In absolutely any other circumstance, Jordan would have objected to that, since he wasn’t a fucking heroine in a bodice-ripper or whatever, but for some reason Taylor demonstrating that he was supernaturally strong right then just made him harder.

            “Do you have lube in here?” Jordan shook his head, and Taylor disappeared, reappearing a few moments later with the lube they’d just bought at the drugstore. He dropped it on the mattress next to Jordan and then ranged himself over him, pressing Jordan into the mattress and kissing him, slow and filthy now, grinding his hips down into Jordan’s steadily as they kissed.

            “Please,” Jordan choked out when Taylor moved on to his neck for a few moments. “Please, Taylor, do it.”

            “Shh,” Taylor said, rolling off of him. “Roll over.” Jordan did so, and Taylor tugged his boxers off, before rubbing his hands over Jordan’s thighs and ass. “God, your body is gorgeous,” he said, dotting kisses down Jordan’s spine. “I don’t get how you and Ryan didn’t have girls lining up at your door before I came along.”

            “Me neither,” Jordan managed, and Taylor laughed, before spreading Jordan wide and licking right over his hole. Jordan gasped, his hands fisting in the sheets, and Taylor didn’t stop, methodically flickering his tongue, alternating it with long, slow licks.

            “Feels good?” Taylor asked, pulling back after a few minutes, and Jordan made a garbled sound that was still clearly in the affirmative. Taylor laughed. “Great.” There was the sound of the cap on the lube flicking open, and Jordan swallowed, hard. “Relax,” Taylor told him, just as he felt the sensation of a lubed finger circling his hole.

            “Goddammit, Taylor, _do it_ ,” Jordan gasped, and he felt Taylor ease his finger in, painstakingly slowly, making Jordan squirm and arch his hips up in an effort to make Taylor go faster.

            “Stay still,” Taylor scolded him. “We haven’t even gotten to the thrashing part yet.”

            “There’s a thrashing part?” Jordan asked, trying not to sound terrified, and Taylor laughed.

            “Oh, you’ll see.” Taylor was gently working that one finger in and out, before Jordan felt him slip in another. There was a bit of a burn, and he bit his lip, closing his eyes. Taylor made a soothing noise, rubbing Jordan’s back with his free hand. “Hush. It’s so worth it.” And then he eased his fingers in deeper, pressed down, and Jordan found out what the thrashing part was.

            “ _Ohh_!” He was glad it was the middle of the day, because otherwise his moan would have woken up half their building. His whole body convulsed, and he felt Taylor sprawl out half on top of him, pinning him down to the bed with one arm braced over his upper back and his leg flung across Jordan’s.

            “So I’m guessing I found your prostate,” Taylor said, and Jordan knew he was grinning without even seeing it. “Is it right here?” He pressed down again, and Jordan moaned again, trying to arch his hips up, chasing the feeling. “Yeah, right there.” Another press down. Jordan made a pathetic, high-pitched whining noise, the pleasure reverberating down his nerves. He was lying flat on his stomach, and the world was still spinning. “God, you’re so fucking hot like this. You’ll be even hotter with my cock inside you. Do you want that?” More pressure against his prostate. Jordan groaned, unable to do anything else with the way Taylor was pinning him down. “Answer me, Jordan, do you want me to fuck you?”

            “Yes,” Jordan choked out. “Oh, God, yes, please, please, fuck me, _please_ , Taylor…”

            “Are you ready now?” Taylor asked. “Or do you need more prep?”

            “Now,” Jordan moaned. “Now, please, come on…” Taylor pulled out his fingers and rolled off him, leaving Jordan lying there trembling and aching with need.  

            “Spread your legs more,” Taylor said, his voice terse, and Jordan did so. He felt a sudden, blunt pressure, and then Taylor slowly pushed in. Jordan tried to focus on his breathing, whimpering a little as Taylor bottomed out. How had he ever thought Taylor’s cock wasn’t that big? “Jordan,” Taylor whispered in his ear. “Jordan, _bello_ , you okay?”

            “Yeah,” Jordan managed. Taylor stayed still inside him, and Jordan realized with a jolt that Taylor was waiting for permission to continue. “God, fuck me, would you?” Taylor made a noise of relief and started to move. It was probably because he was a sex demon, but it didn’t take him long at all to find Jordan’s prostate again, and suddenly he was hammering against it on every thrust and Jordan was begging for Taylor to keep going, to fuck him even harder.

            It turned out Jordan did come without Taylor touching his cock.

            Afterwards, Jordan was lying facedown on the mattress, trying to come back to Earth and sanity, when Taylor sprawled out next to him and promptly wrapped himself around Jordan, holding him tightly to his chest.

            “You all right?” Taylor asked him softly, and Jordan nodded. He wasn’t sure if he could talk yet. Taylor was rubbing his back comfortingly, and Jordan lay there breathing in the scent of Taylor’s skin and trying to collect himself.

            “You smell like my grandmother,” he said finally, and Taylor looked down at him in confusion.

            “What?”

            “Roses. You smell like my grandmother.” Jordan was smiling as he said this, though, and Taylor smiled back, warmly.

            “I hope after what we just did, your grandmother smells like me instead.”

            “I suppose,” Jordan drawled, and Taylor just kissed him.

            When Jordan thought he could stand up, he got out of bed, pulled on some boxers, and wandered out into the living room, followed closely by Taylor. Ryan was sitting on the couch playing _Halo_ something-or-other and eating the Doritos Jordan had gotten at Shoppers.

            “Hey,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the two of them. “God, would you gag him next time, Taylor? Even I don’t moan that loudly.”

            “You will when I fuck you,” Taylor said calmly as Jordan turned what he was sure were several different shades of flourescent pink.

            “Whatever.” Ryan winked at Jordan before turning back to his game, and Taylor flopped down on the couch next to him, watching the video game on the screen with interest. “The con’s tomorrow,” Ryan said, not looking away from the screen.

            “Yeah,” Jordan said, sitting down on Taylor’s other side. “I finished sewing the braids onto your sweater while you were in class today.”

            “You did two gold ones, right?”

            “Wait, Spock has two gold braids on his sweater? I thought it was just one, despite the fact that I just finished rewatching all of _TOS_ for the seventy billionth time. I’ll be sure to fix that immediately.” Ryan reached across Taylor to swat irritably at Jordan, without letting go of the controller.

            “Shut up. I just wanted to make sure.”

            “Stop worrying, Nuge. You’ll make a very convincing Vulcan. Especially if you let me do your eyebrows.”

            “You have no idea how afraid I am to let you with a glue stick anywhere near my face.”

            “It’s the best technique. I did research on the Internet, it’s how drag queens do it.”

            “What?” Ryan yelped, and Taylor, who had been hanging out on the couch next to Jordan while he’d done some cursory Googling on the subject, laughed.

            “He showed me the videos. It certainly looks...effective.”

            “If you really want accuracy, Ryan, Taylor and I went out to Shoppers to get the glue stick and an eyeliner pencil.”

            “Fine,” Ryan said grumpily. “You better watch those videos again, though. I want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”

            The next morning, Jordan and Ryan parked Taylor in front of the TV watching old episodes of _NYPD Blue_ as they got themselves ready. Jordan’s costume was relatively simple--he’d stitched the captain’s braids onto his sweater the day before when he’d done Ryan’s, so all he really had to do was get dressed. Ryan, on the other hand, had to deal with both ear prosthetics and Jordan’s plans for his eyebrows. They’d gotten the ears on decently and Jordan was in the process of covering Ryan’s eyebrows with glue when Taylor stuck his head into Ryan’s bedroom, saw them, and started laughing.

            “What the fuck are you two wearing?”  
            “In the 23rd century, flared capris are the height of manliness,” Ryan said, not looking away from Jordan. “Also, bite me.” Taylor was still laughing at them.

            “What happened to your ears?” he asked Ryan.

            “He got them stuck in a mechanical rice picker,” Jordan answered without turning around, and Ryan held up a hand to high-five him. Taylor came over to peer over Jordan’s shoulder at his handiwork.

            “You’re going to make them crooked.”

            “No, I’m not.”

            “Yes, you are. Let me do it. What are they supposed to look like?” Rolling his eyes, Jordan handed over the pencil and his reference picture, and Taylor deftly sketched on a pair of Vulcan eyebrows for Ryan. “There. Much better.”

            “Everyone’s a fucking critic.” Laughing a bit, Ryan stood up and gave Jordan a light, sweet kiss.

            “You did your best.” He kissed Taylor too, and then headed out towards the living room. “We should get going soon,” he called. “If Jordan’s buying two tickets, I want him to get his money’s worth.”

            “You’re so considerate,” Jordan grumbled as Taylor snorted.

            The con was being held at a hotel in downtown Edmonton, and once they got there and paid the entrance fees (Jordan had glared bitterly at Ryan the entire time his credit card was being swiped), Taylor trailed after the two of them onto the main floor.

            “Let’s see.” Ryan looked over at Jordan’s shoulder at the schedule. “What do you want to do first?”

            “Well, we probably shouldn’t leave him alone,” Jordan said, nodding at Taylor. “We’ll trade off?”

            “Deal. What panels do you want to go to? He probably won’t like the sitting.”

            “True.”

            “Hey, Nuge, Ebs!” Jordan looked up at a familiar voice, to see Sam from the gaming store waving at them. At least, Jordan was pretty sure it was Sam--the guy was in a full Batman costume, which made it a little harder to tell.

            “Hey,” Ryan said as Sam came over to where they were standing. “Nice costume.”

“Yeah. Are those hockey pants?” Jordan asked, and Sam punched him in the arm.  
            “Shut up, I had them around.” It was then that he noticed Taylor. “Who’s he?”

            “Friend of ours,” Ryan said evasively, but Taylor extended a hand, giving Sam a wide, gorgeous grin.

            “I’m Taylor.” Sam shook his hand.

            “Hi. So you’re a friend of these two, huh? Where did you come from? I’ve never seen you around before.”

            “He just moved here,” Jordan said.

            “Really? From where?”

            “Florence,” Jordan said without thinking, and Ryan kicked him in the ankle. Sam looked at him in confused surprise.

            “Italy?”

            “No, South Carolina,” Taylor said smoothly, and Jordan thanked his lucky stars that Taylor was a better liar than him and Ryan combined.

            “Oh,” Sam said, losing interest. “Anyway, your horns are awesome. What are they made of, clay?”

            “Yeah,” Taylor said, shooting an amused look at Jordan out of the corner of his eye. “Clay.”

            An hour later, Ryan and Jordan were sitting on the floor of the room going through comic book longboxes at one of the stands, and Taylor was alternately watching them, fidgeting, and making eyes at passerby.

            “That panel you wanted to go to is about to start,” Ryan said, checking the time on his phone. “The Cthulhu one, remember?”

            “Right.” It was a panel on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos in popular culture, which interested Jordan and totally bored Ryan. “Don’t let him wander off, okay?” Jordan said, getting to his feet, and Ryan rolled his eyes, not looking up from the longbox he was going through.

            “I won’t.”

            “Meet you back here in an hour, then.”

            The panel was fascinating, although Jordan was glad Ryan wasn’t there so he didn’t have to listen to his rant on the inherent racism of everything Lovecraft had ever touched. After it was over, Jordan went back to the comic book stand, only to find Ryan right where he’d left him, still sitting on the floor reading comics. He was currently engrossed in an issue of _Hellblazer_.

            “Hey,” Jordan said, touching Ryan’s shoulder to get his attention. “Where’s Taylor?”

            “What?” Ryan looked up, before glancing around and promptly going white in the face. “Oh, shit.”

            “Seriously?” Jordan groaned. “Seriously. You had one job!” Ryan shoved the comic back into the box and scrambled to his feet, casting around.

            “He can’t have gone far. It’s not a very big con.”

            “For all we know, he could be…” Jordan trailed off, because they were in public and he’d been about to say _eating someone’s soul in a supply closet_.

            “Don’t be dumb, it’s way more likely he’s fucking someone right now,” Ryan said, reading his mind.

            “That’s not much better,” Jordan mumbled, not sure why he was feeling possessive of Taylor at that moment. Taylor was a sex demon, it’s not like fidelity was a trait that they were known for.

            “We have to find him, anyway,” Ryan said. “How do you want to search?”

            “Well, it’s not like he’s particularly forgettable,” Jordan pointed out. “We could just ask people.”

            “Are you looking for your friend?” They both looked up at the greasy-haired proprietor of the comic-book stand. Jones, Jordan thought his name was. “He went that way, about fifteen minutes ago.”

            “Thanks,” Jordan said fervently, and he and Ryan set off in that direction.

            “Hey, there’s Nail,” Ryan said, pointing, and Jordan saw Nail Yakupov, a Russian kid who was in some of Ryan’s classes, dressed as one of the guys from _Fullmetal Alchemist_. Jordan had never really been that into anime, but Ryan was, and he’d absorbed a lot of information unwillingly. Nail caught sight of them and put down the dice bag he was looking at, turning with a grin.

            “Hello!”

            “Hey, Yak, we’re looking for someone,” Ryan said. “Tall, blond, huge mouth, horns?” Jordan was relieved to see that the description registered with Nail.

            “Him? Friend of you?”

            “Yeah. Did you see where he went?”

            “That way,” Nail said, pointing. “Said hi to me. I think, flirting?” Jordan and Ryan exchanged annoyed looks. “He with you?”

            “In a manner of speaking. Thanks. Don’t get shot,” Ryan teased.

            “Will try,” Nail said with a grin. “Good luck.”

            “You’re right,” Jordan said as they headed off in the direction Nail had indicated. “He’s probably _fucking_ someone in a supply closet.”

            “Isn’t that better than eating their soul?” Ryan responded in a low voice, and Jordan sighed.

            “Anything’s better than that and you know it.” Ryan sighed a little.

            “Yeah.”

            “Looking for your friend?” Jordan’s head snapped up to see Sam, standing next to Justin Schultz, someone else they frequently played games with. Justin was wearing a Batman T-shirt and an expression of smug amusement.

            “Yeah, actually,” Ryan said. “You seen him?”  
            “Yeah, like five minutes ago. He was going that way.”

            “He stopped to hit on Schultzy, like, hardcore,” Sam said, laughing. “It was hilarious.”

            “Really? Because in that shirt Justin looks way more like your groupie,” Jordan commented, and Ryan went off into a fit of giggles as Justin glared.

            “That’s exactly what I said,” Sam told them. “He was the one who didn’t want to coordinate beforehand.”

            “Shut up. Anyway, your friend is gorgeous, but you all know dick is so not my thing,” Justin said, shrugging. “So he went on his way.”

            “You’d have sucked his cock and you know it,” Sam said, elbowing Justin. “Don’t front.”

            “Maybe,” Justin said noncommittally, and Jordan rolled his eyes.

            “See you two around,” he said, heading off in the direction Justin had indicated, Ryan following behind him.

            “He is in a supply closet, isn’t he?” Ryan said on a sigh, but it was then that Jordan heard a familiar laugh, coming from a corner of the room.

            “No, he’s not,” Jordan said, grabbing Ryan’s wrist and dragging him around a stall, where they found Taylor, leaning against the wall and talking to Gabe Landeskog and Matt Duchene. Jordan knew Matt fairly well, and Ryan was good friends with Gabe, but right then, seeing the look Taylor was giving them, he was seriously contemplating punching them both.

            God, he was an idiot. _Sex demon_.

            “Hey!” Taylor looked up at the both of them with a wide, charming grin. Jordan tried not to look overtly hostile as Gabe and Matt turned to them. Gabe was dressed as Han Solo and Matt as Luke Skywalker, and they both looked really good, especially Gabe, who already looked like a male model in virtually anything. No wonder Taylor had selected them as targets.

            “There you are,” Ryan said, sounding both relieved and irritated with Taylor. “We’ve been looking for you.” Taylor shrugged.

            “Sorry. I got bored.”

            “You didn’t tell us that you had a new friend living with you,” Gabe said to Ryan. “Or that you and Jordan are finally dating.”

            “What? We’re not-- _what_?” Ryan sputtered, and Taylor looked at him, the picture of wide-eyed innocence.

            “I didn’t think it was a secret.”

            “We’re not dating, not at all,” Ryan said, not looking over at Jordan, and it felt kind of like Ryan had just punched him in the stomach. Taylor saw the look on Jordan’s face, and Jordan watched as it processed for Taylor exactly what he’d done wrong.

            “I must have been mistaken,” he said finally. “Sorry about that.” Matt and Gabe were both looking at the three of them in confusion.

            “Yeah,” Jordan said faintly. “Ryan, I’ll be right back, okay?”

            “Sure,” Ryan said. He was still not looking at Jordan, but his cheeks were red with embarrassment. “We’ll be here.”

            Jordan went into the bathroom and stood in one of the stalls for a while, trying to breathe normally and calm himself down. He really was an idiot. Just because he and Ryan hooked up with Taylor on a regular basis didn’t mean they were _dating_ , didn’t mean that Ryan felt the same way as he did. It had been astonishingly naïve and stupid of him to think otherwise. That thought didn’t get rid of the sick, twisting feeling in his stomach, though.

When he was pretty sure he could face Ryan and Taylor again, he headed back out to the convention floor. The two of them were waiting at the exact same place, silently standing there not looking at each other.

            “Okay,” Jordan said, doing his best to act normal. “What next?”

            Somehow, Jordan survived the remainder of the con, and as soon as they got home he headed towards his bedroom.

            “Where are you going?” Ryan asked, standing awkwardly in the living room next to Taylor, both of them looking at Jordan a touch anxiously.

            “I’m going to go for a run.”

            “A run? It’s too late.”

            “I’ll be fine,” Jordan said, going into his bedroom and slamming the door behind him. It might have been juvenile, but it made him feel a little bit better.

            When he came back out, dressed in his running clothes, Taylor and Ryan were both gone and the door to Ryan’s bedroom was closed. Jordan nearly put his fist through the living room wall, but managed to restrain himself, instead heading out the door before he could hear any sounds coming from Ryan’s bedroom.

            He didn’t pay much attention to where he was going, mostly just focusing on putting as much distance between himself and the apartment as possible, and he was so busy thinking about Ryan, Taylor, and Ryan and Taylor he didn’t realize how lost he was until he’d been running for at least a half hour. He stopped on a street corner, looking around for a landmark he recognized and seeing nothing.

            “Fuck,” he said, and then, out of nowhere, someone grabbed his arm, spun him around, and socked him in the face. Jordan yelled, but the next thing he knew he was dragged into a nearby alley and pinned up against the bricks of a nearby building.

            “Give me your wallet,” the mugger said, and Jordan found himself wishing that he hadn’t left his wallet sitting on his dresser.

            “I--I don’t have it.” The guy punched him again.

            “I said, give me your fucking wallet.”

            “I don’t have it! It’s-” There was sudden movement out of the corner of Jordan’s eye. The guy saw it, turned, and then he was the one yelling as Taylor, who had appeared from God knows where, grabbed him and flung him up against the opposite wall of the alley, like he was a rag doll. Growling in what sounded like pure, animalistic fury, Taylor hauled the mugger to his feet before wrapping his hand around his neck and lifting him up so his toes were just brushing the ground. “No! Taylor, _no_!” Jordan shouted. The mugger’s face was turning purple. Taylor just growled again, his fingers tightening further. “Stop it, please, Taylor, don’t,” Jordan begged.

            “He hurt you,” Taylor said, his voice colder and more terrifying than anything Jordan had ever heard before.

            “Yeah, he did, but please, please, don’t. I don’t want you to kill anyone because of me.” There was a long pause, and then Taylor let go. The mugger crumpled to the ground, and Taylor turned, walking up to Jordan, who was leaning against the wall. His knees weren’t working quite right.

            “Here,” Taylor said, putting his arm around Jordan’s waist. “Can you walk?”

            “Yeah.” Taylor kissed Jordan’s temple.

            “Let’s go home.”

            Jordan must have been running in more of a circle than he thought, because they were only fifteen or so minutes from their apartment. The walk was quiet, but Taylor’s arm hadn’t moved from around Jordan for a second. They came through the door, and Ryan jumped up off the couch immediately at the sight of them.

            “Jordan!” He looked unbelievably relieved to see them, and also like he might have been crying. “Oh, God, Jordan!” And then, before Jordan could say anything, Ryan crossed the room and kissed him, hard enough to hurt Jordan’s split lip. He winced, and Ryan pulled back, cupping Jordan’s face and tilting it up gently to examine his injuries. “What happened?”

            “Mugger,” Jordan said, and Ryan kissed him again, considerably more softly this time.

            “I didn’t know, he just said you were in danger and then disappeared, I didn’t know what the fuck was happening, I was so scared,” he said, in a rush, and Jordan managed a wan smile at him.

            “I’m fine.”

            “No, he’s not,” Taylor said. His hand was still warm on Jordan’s lower back.

            “No, I am, I just have a black eye and-”

            “Shh,” Ryan said, touching Jordan’s face. “Do you need ice? You need ice.” He darted into the kitchen, opening the fridge and rummaging around before coming up with an ice pack, wrapping it in a paper towel, and bringing it back over to Jordan. “Here, hold still-”

            “Stop it, Ryan,” Jordan said, and Ryan rocked back, looking up at Jordan.

            “Stop what?” He sounded hurt.

            “We’re not dating, remember?” Jordan said, trying not to sound bitter and failing miserably. “You don’t need to play fucking nursemaid.”

            “Oh, for the love of-” Taylor began, sounding impatient and annoyed, but Ryan cut him off.

            “I love you.” Jordan froze, staring up at Ryan.

            “What?” he finally managed to say, and Ryan licked his lips, looking terrified and uncertain and painfully earnest, all at once.

            “I love you. I have for months and months.” Jordan was pretty sure he couldn’t have said anything even if he’d tried, so instead he just flung his arms around Ryan’s neck and kissed him. Ryan, though, pushed him back a little. “Jordan--what-”

            “I love you too,” Jordan said, and the way Ryan beamed at him after he said that made any pain he was feeling vanish.

            “Really?” Ryan said, and Jordan nodded. He was grinning widely enough that it was pulling on the split in his lip, and he couldn’t even make himself care.

            “Really.” Ryan kissed him again, although this time it was tender and careful, _loving_ , even. Holy shit.

            “Come on,” he said when they broke apart again. “I want you to fuck my brains out.” Swallowing hard, Jordan nodded. Ryan took his hand and tugged him towards his bedroom, and Jordan grabbed onto Taylor’s hand too, pulling him after them.

            Jordan had seen Ryan naked a lot over the past two weeks, but as Ryan stripped off his boxers and stood there wearing nothing but a smile, Jordan couldn’t get over the fact that someone that gorgeous loved him. Ryan sprawled out on the bed, propping himself up on his elbows, and Jordan couldn’t do anything but stare for a long moment.

            “Go on, Jordan,” Taylor said from behind him, giving him a light push in the direction of the bed. “He’s waiting for you.” Hands shaking, Jordan stripped off his own clothes and got on the bed with Ryan, kissing him softly before looking over at Taylor.

            “Come on, come over here.” Taylor hesitated for a second, and Jordan looked at him quizzically. “What’s up?”

            “Nothing,” Taylor said after a few moments, walking over and getting on the other side of the bed, sitting up against the headboard. “Go on, I’ll watch.”

            “You sure?” Jordan asked, and Taylor nodded.

            “Yeah. Don’t keep Ryan waiting.” Jordan turned back to Ryan, who had already gotten the lube out of his nightstand drawer.

            “Do we need a rubber?” he asked, and Jordan snorted.

            “Dude, I haven’t fucked anyone other than Taylor in, like, a year. I’m pretty sure I’m clean, unless Taylor gave me the demon herp or whatever.”

            “I’m pretty sure if he had the demon herp, I’d already have it anyway,” Ryan said, handing the lube to Jordan with a nervous smile. “Go slow, though, would you? I’ve never stuck anything in there before.”

            “Yeah,” Jordan said, gulping. “Sure.” Ryan rolled over and got up on his hands and knees, and Jordan slicked his fingers up, before rubbing his other hand over Ryan’s back. He could feel Ryan tense up as he slowly eased the first finger in, and paused, kissing the small of Ryan’s back. “Okay, Nuge?”

            “God, Jordan, I said slow, not nonexistent,” Ryan said, glancing back at him in annoyance, and Jordan heard Taylor laugh a little.

            “You’ve done this before,” he said to Jordan. “Remember what you’ve done with me? Just move it in and out until he’s looser, then add a second.” Following Taylor’s advice, Jordan started to move his finger, cautiously slipping in another when the first seemed to be meeting less resistance. “Now start looking for his prostate. You’ll like that,” Taylor assured Ryan. “When I fingered Jordan, I thought he was going to come as soon as I touched his.”

            “I could hear,” Ryan said. His voice was already hoarse from arousal. “When you were fucking him yesterday. It was so fucking hot, I had to stop playing _Halo_ and jerk off.” Jordan had to bite the inside of his cheek from _that_ mental image, but two seconds later he curled his fingers down and Ryan moaned, long and low, tightening around Jordan’s fingers. Jordan tried it again, and Ryan made that same low, obscene moan, a shudder going through him.

            “Feels good, Ryan?” Taylor asked, giving Jordan an amused look. Ryan nodded emphatically, apparently unable to speak. “Want more?”

            “Yes,” Ryan breathed. “Fuck, _yes_.”

            “Jordan, put in a third finger,” Taylor directed, and Jordan obeyed. “Don’t touch his prostate too much, you want him to come with you inside him.” Jordan heard Ryan whimper at that, which pretty much summed up his feelings on the matter too. “Give his cock a pull, though. He might like that.” Jordan curled his hand around Ryan’s cock and stroked up, and Ryan shuddered again, making a soft, vulnerable, overwhelmed noise.

            “Please, just fuck me,” Ryan whispered, and Jordan looked up at Taylor for more direction.

            “I thought you wanted slow,” Taylor said, but he was grinning at Jordan as he said it. “This is slow.”

            “My-- _ohh-_ ” Jordan had pressed against that spot again. Ryan swallowed, clearly struggling for composure. “My balls are going to fall off soon.”

            “Well, we can’t have that,” Taylor said, laughing. “Right, Jordan?”

            “Right.” Jordan took his fingers out, wiping them off on the sheets, before picking up the lube again. He slicked up his cock, before squirting some more on Ryan’s hole for good measure, and then he got up on his knees behind Ryan, rubbing his hands over Ryan’s back and ass. “You ready?” he murmured, and Ryan nodded, looking back at him.

            “Fuck me,” he said, and Jordan was already easing inside.

            He’d fucked Taylor before, once, and that had felt amazing--beyond amazing, really. This was the same, but different at the same time, because rather than Taylor beneath him, giving Jordan snarky instructions and muttering in Tuscan, it was Ryan, who was whining in the back of his throat and swearing under his breath, his voice coated with desperation.

            “Fuck...fuck...oh, holy _shit_ …”

            “You okay, Nuge?” Jordan gritted out, closing his eyes to try and keep himself together. It didn’t work, because then all he could think of was how good Ryan felt, hot and slick and tight around him.

            “Fine,” Ryan said, through what sounded like clenched teeth. “Although you won’t be if you don’t move soon, okay?” Jordan heard Taylor laugh, and had to smile a little himself.

            “Okay.” He thrust, once, and Ryan cried out, making Jordan swear loudly.

            “I’d do that again, Jordan,” Taylor advised, still smiling, and Jordan did. Ryan groaned softly, rocking back in a wordless plea for more, and Jordan fell into a steady rhythm. It didn’t surprise him that Ryan was relatively restrained, even when getting fucked senseless, but that just made every moan Jordan wrung out of him even better. When he came, it was gasping Jordan’s name, and Jordan had rarely felt prouder of himself in all his 23 years.

             In the quiet afterwards, Jordan lay there sprawled out on the bed with his head in Taylor’s lap and Ryan halfway on top of him. Taylor hadn’t even asked either of them to get him off; in fact, his pants were still zipped. He had his fingers in Jordan’s hair and was scratching his scalp lightly, and it felt so nice Jordan had almost drifted off to sleep by the time Taylor spoke.

             “I’ll miss you two.”

            “What?” Jordan asked drowsily, as Ryan stirred on top of him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

            “Yes, I am,” Taylor said. “It’s time for me to leave. I’ve fulfilled my purpose.”

            “What are you talking about?” Jordan asked, displacing Ryan and sitting up. Ryan sat up too, looking equally confused.

            “The spell he used to summon me was to give him sexual companionship,” Taylor said, nodding at Ryan. “He’s got you for that, now. He doesn’t need me anymore.” Jordan and Ryan exchanged looks of horror.

            “But--but-”

            “You can’t go!” Ryan said, visibly upset. “You can’t.”

            “Yeah,” Jordan said, aware that he sounded desperate and more than a little pathetic. “Come on, Taylor, you have to stay. We really, really want you to stay.”

            “If I don’t go on my own, the spell will just weaken enough that eventually I won’t have a choice,” Taylor told them. “Besides, the two of you have each other now. I’d just be in the way.”

            “What--no!” Ryan exclaimed. “You’d never be in the way.”

            “How could you think that?” Jordan asked, and Taylor’s face twisted a little.

            “You love each other.”

            “And you,” Jordan said without thinking, and Taylor’s eyes widened.

            “What?”

            “We love you too,” Ryan said, to Jordan’s relief. He and Ryan were on the same page about this, at least. Taylor was staring at the two of them out of wide, shocked blue eyes. “Do you love us?”

            “I…” Taylor bit his lower lip, looking down. “Love isn’t something that demons can do, really.”

            “Do you want to stay, then?” Jordan asked, his heart in his throat. Taylor looked up at him.

            “Yes,” he said quietly. “I want to stay.”

            “Then we’ll figure something out,” Ryan said firmly. “No matter what.”

            Despite Ryan’s assurance, over the next few days, Jordan started to lose hope. They had gone through Ryan’s grimoire cover-to-cover multiple times, searching for anything that would help them keep Taylor on the human plane, and while Jordan was pretty sure by the end of it that he could rain Hellfire and damnation on anyone who’d ever looked at him funny, they hadn’t found anything useful.

            “I checked all over the Internet, too,” Ryan said late one night after Jordan had gotten home from work, about a week later. Taylor was sitting at one end of the couch watching _Criminal Minds_ , and Jordan and Ryan were huddled at the other end trying to come up with a new plan. “I found plenty of stuff about summoning demons, but nothing about keeping them around.”

            “What do you think about looking in an actual library?” Jordan suggested. “The University of Alberta won’t have jackshit, but maybe if we went to Vancouver or Toronto or somewhere?”

            “Maybe. That’s an awful long way to go on a _maybe,_ though.” Jordan had to agree with that. If they had any money, it would be a different story, but even though Jordan would have emptied his bank account in a second to keep Taylor with them, he couldn’t conjure money out of thin air. “One of us could try calling places? See if we can narrow down the field. I wouldn’t have a problem making the trip if we knew they’d have something that would help.”

            “I’ll see if I can find out what they have available online first. They have to have catalogs even of their antique books, see if they have anything listed as _creepy old demon-summoning grimoire_.”

            “You two don’t have to do all this,” Taylor said from his end of the couch, not taking his eyes off the TV.

            “Of course we do,” Ryan said, looking over at him. “We love you.”

            “We’re not just going to sit here and watch you fade away,” Jordan told him, the very idea distressing. Taylor had explained that was what would happen over the next few weeks; he would slowly lose power, find it harder to keep a human form, until finally he wouldn’t be able to hold it anymore and would vanish from the human plane. Taylor was silent, and Jordan started to worry. “Unless...you don’t want to stay?”

            “I want to stay,” Taylor said quietly. “I want to stay more than you know.”

            “Then we’ll figure something out,” Ryan said firmly. “Even if we have to go to fucking Toronto.”

            “You don’t have to go to Toronto.”

            “Taylor, we mean it, if that’s what it takes to-”

            “It’s not, I don’t think,” Taylor said, finally looking over at the two of them. “I’m pretty sure there’s another way.”

            “There is?” Taylor nodded.

            “I didn’t want to suggest this at first, until I was sure it was necessary, but I think I can become human.” Ryan and Jordan both stared at him openmouthed. Taylor started to look a touch uncomfortable. “I mean, if that’s something you two want?”

            “Human,” Jordan said slowly. “Like, mortal? Without powers or anything?”

            “Yeah,” Taylor said briefly.

            “You’d do that? To stay with us?” Ryan asked, sounding very young. Taylor nodded.

            “For you two, I would.” He didn’t even sound the least bit hesitant, like he’d made his decision already and nothing was going to change his mind. Jordan wanted nothing more than to tackle him down to the couch and kiss him senseless, but there were important things that needed discussing before they could all fuck like rabbits.

            “How?” Jordan asked. “What does the ritual involve?”  
            “It’s not a ritual, exactly,” Taylor said. “I think what would need to happen is bringing me up to full power, as strong as I can get, and then taking off this.” He pointed at the collar. “Demons don’t exist in physical form on the human plane unless they’re summoned or captured. I think that having me here, but free, might force me permanently into a human body.” There was a long silence, and Taylor sighed. “I know you two probably don’t-”

             “Isn’t that collar the thing keeping you from hurting us?” Jordan asked. “What happens if we bring you up to full power, Ryan takes the collar off, and it was all bullshit and you eat our souls?”

             “That would never happen,” Taylor said firmly. “This isn’t a long con. It’s way more likely I would just lose control and kill you, or I would die myself.”  

             “Reassuring,” Jordan said, and Ryan laughed faintly. “Taylor, can you go into Ryan’s bedroom for a bit? He and I need to talk about this.”

             “Sure,” Taylor said, getting up. “You two don’t need to do this, you know. I just--you said you wanted a way, and-”

             “We’ll be in there in a second,” Ryan said, pointing. “Go on.”

             As soon as the bedroom door shut behind Taylor, Ryan turned to Jordan.

             “So,” he said, “do you think he’s telling the truth?”

             “I don’t know,” Jordan said honestly. He might love Taylor, but he had no illusions about Taylor’s own morality or trustworthiness. He was a demon, after all. “I really want to believe him.”

             “Yeah.” Ryan was quiet for a few moments. “We’re going to do what he says anyway, aren’t we?” Jordan sighed a little to himself.

            “Yeah, we are.”   

            “We’re such idiots,” Ryan said, smiling wryly at Jordan. “In love with a sex demon. Who does that?”  
            “Apparently, us,” Jordan pointed out, and Ryan sighed, leaning into him. Jordan put his arm around Ryan’s shoulders and squeezed. “Does it say something terrible about us that we would risk letting a demon loose on this plane just to try and keep him here?”

            “No,” Ryan said. “Have you seen his mouth?”

            “Yeah,” Jordan agreed, because that was a damn fine point. “Well, if we’re going to risk the future of the rest of humanity or whatever, we should just get it over with, right?”

            “Yeah.”

            Taylor was sitting cross-legged on Ryan’s bed when the two of them came into the room. He took one look at them and must have seen what their decision was, because his eyes widened a little and he licked his lips, looking down at his hands.

            “Are you sure?” he asked them.

            “Are you?” Ryan returned. “We’re not the ones giving up demonic powers or whatever.” Taylor looked up at them then, a surprisingly human softness in his eyes.

            “It’ll be better than spending the rest of eternity wishing I had.” He looked visibly nervous by then, and Jordan hoped fervently it wasn’t an affect. “I’ve never...you love me. I’ve never been loved before. That’s worth giving up a lot.”

            “In that case,” Jordan said, trying to keep his voice from shaking, “what do we need to do?”

            “Bring me up to full strength, first,” Taylor said, and Ryan and Jordan just looked at him in confusion. “We need to fuck until I’m as powerful as possible,” Taylor elaborated. “Give me a lot of energy to feed off of.”

            “Oh,” Jordan said. “We can totally do that.” Ryan laughed a little, starting to take his clothes off. Jordan followed suit, watching as Taylor’s leather pants faded away. He froze, pants around his ankles, to stare, and was slightly relieved to notice Ryan had done the same. Taylor quirked an eyebrow at them.

             “Might as well use my powers while they still exist, right?”

             “I guess,” Jordan said, stepping out of his pants. “Have you been faking needing to undress all this time?”

             “Of course,” Taylor said with a grin. “It seemed to relax you, the more human I acted.”

            “What else have you been faking?” Ryan asked nervously.

            “Breathing,” Taylor said calmly. “A heartbeat. Needing to walk from place to place.” Jordan remembered a few times when Taylor had appeared out of thin air, most notably when he’d come after the mugger.

            “How’d you know I was in danger, when you showed up and beat up that guy?” he asked, because it couldn’t even be some summoner-demon bond or anything.

            “I was paying attention to you,” Taylor answered. “Ryan was worried, so I knew you were doing something dangerous, and it turned out he was very right.”

            “Why did you care?” Jordan asked, against his better judgement. “If you can’t love. Why did you care that I was in danger?” He didn’t look over at Ryan, but felt Ryan move closer to him, slipping an arm around Jordan’s waist as they both waited for Taylor’s answer. Taylor looked like he was searching for the right thing to say, and Jordan tried not to panic. “Taylor?”

            “I told you once demons have a different concept of _fair_ ,” Taylor finally answered, sounding a little hesitant. “I had never--I never expected humans to treat me fairly by my standards. I never had been, in the past. I was a commodity, something to be used, exploited. I wasn’t considered equal, and my thoughts and desires were never taken into consideration. You two, you cared. The night you were attacked, the way I knew you were in danger was that I could feel your fear, that someone was hurting you. Demons are good at sensing fear,” he said with a wry smile. “For a lot of reasons. But all I could think when I felt that was that someone was _daring_ to hurt you, daring to hurt someone who cared enough about me to want to keep me safe. So I went to protect you. I didn’t even think about it. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have killed him.”

            “I know,” Jordan said, his voice barely audible. “So it’s all about fairness, is that it? Ryan and I are good to you, you’re good to us?”

            “I thought you’d take it that way,” Taylor said sadly. “It’s not just-”

            “No,” Jordan said quickly. “No, I get it. I understand, now.” He turned to Ryan. “If we’re going to do this, we should do this.” Ryan leaned down and kissed him, gently.

            “Okay.” He turned back to Taylor. “Do you have a plan, again?”

            “I do,” Jordan said, before Taylor could say anything. Both Taylor and Ryan looked at him in surprise. Taylor always took the lead in bed, since he was the one with the most experience, or really, significant experience at all.

            “What, then?” Ryan asked, and Jordan half-smiled at him.   
            “You fuck him, while he’s fucking me.” Jordan was intensely gratified when he heard Ryan gasp and Taylor make a pleased noise from the bed. “That okay?”

            “Come here and I’ll show you just how okay that is,” Taylor told him, reaching out for the two of them.

            Five minutes later, and Taylor and Jordan were sprawled out on the bed kissing while Ryan, with the same focused intensity with which he did everything else, rimmed Taylor. Jordan could tell how much Taylor was enjoying it; he kept sighing into Jordan’s mouth, his kisses slow and languorous, like they had an eternity to spend fucking each other and there really wasn’t any rush. Jordan’s mouth moved along his jaw down to his neck, and Taylor melted further into the mattress, tilting his head to give Jordan better access.

            “Mmm,” he hummed, his fingers trailing up and down the groove of Jordan’s spine.

            “Feels good?” Jordan asked, glancing down at Ryan. He’d been afraid at first that Ryan would have a problem with rimming Taylor, and had even volunteered to do it himself when Taylor had suggested it, but Ryan had taken the task on as a personal challenge.

            “Feels great,” Taylor said on a sigh. He was adorably limp by then, his whole body relaxed, except for his hard-on. Jordan was itching to touch Taylor’s cock, stroke it, maybe even lick the precum off, but right then it was Ryan’s show. “You should add fingers,” Taylor said, and taking the cue, Jordan sat up, hunting around for wherever the lube had ended up and pressing it into Ryan’s outstretched hand. Ryan pulled back just long enough to coat his fingers in lube, before pushing two inside, scissoring them and then, with a slightly nervous glance up at Jordan, slipping his tongue inside Taylor between them. “Fuck,” Taylor breathed, eyes slipping closed, and Jordan watched as Ryan worked Taylor open with his fingers and tongue, until Taylor was squirming, moaning, anything but relaxed by then. “Okay,” Taylor gasped out, finally. “Take care of Jordan, would you? I’m ready to get on with the fucking.” Ryan sat up, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand, before crawling over to Jordan.

            “You want the same?” he asked. Jordan managed, somehow, to find his voice.

            “If you’re offering,” he said, and next thing he knew he was flat on his back, knees bent in the same position Taylor had just been in, and Ryan leaned down and swiped his tongue right over Jordan’s hole. “Jesus Christ,” Jordan swore, his hands fisting in the bedding, and as Ryan started to rim him, Taylor rolled over to start pressing kisses over Jordan’s neck, shoulders, collarbones, sternum, sucking on his nipples, fingertips drawing absent patterns over Jordan’s abs. Ryan was way more cautious with his mouth than Taylor had been, but he was also more determinedly thorough, and by the time he had his fingers and tongue inside, Jordan was so hard it was bordering on painful. Taylor, meanwhile, was refusing to kiss Jordan on the mouth, despite Jordan doing his best to make that happen.

            “No,” Taylor said, after Jordan had given up on any form of subtlety, grabbed a fistful of Taylor’s hair, and tried to yank his head up. “You sound too good, I’m not ruining that.”

            “Way too good,” Ryan agreed from between Jordan’s legs, and Jordan realized he’d been making soft, overwhelmed noises this entire time.

            “I’d really like someone’s dick in me, okay? I don’t really care whose,” Jordan said, taking a second to marvel that not only had he just said that, but at how true it was. Taylor seemed to see.

            “I love that we’ve managed to turn him into a total cockslut,” he said to Ryan, who laughed, pulling his fingers out and sitting up.

            “Whatever. It’s hot.”

            “Bite me,” Jordan said affectionately, and that time Taylor did kiss him on the mouth, hot and passionate.

            “You two still in to try me in the middle?” he asked, after he’d finished turning Jordan even stupider than before.

            “Fuck yes,” Jordan and Ryan answered in unison, and Taylor cracked up.

            “Okay, then. Jordan, hands and knees,” he directed, and Jordan did as he was told. “Ryan, kneel behind me.” The mattress shifted as Ryan moved, and then Taylor was leaning over Jordan, kissing his shoulderblade, rubbing his hands over Jordan’s chest. Jordan could feel Taylor’s cock, pressing up against him, and had to close his eyes and take a deep breath. “I’m going to enter Jordan first, then Ryan should do the same to me. It’ll be awkward at first,” Taylor warned. “But it should finish up amazing.”

            “Enough talking,” Jordan said. “Get the fuck inside-- _ohh_ ,” he moaned as Taylor slid inside him with one smooth movement. It still hurt, although less than the first time, but it also felt unbelievably good. Taylor stayed still inside of Jordan, and as his fingers tightened on Jordan’s hips and he gasped out a curse in Tuscan, Jordan guessed that Ryan was pushing in himself. There was a long, hanging moment of silence, the only sound in the room Jordan and Ryan both panting for breath. Apparently Taylor wasn’t bothering to fake breathing any more, which Jordan actually kind of appreciated.

            “Ready?” Taylor asked, and his voice was low and rough.

            “Yeah,” Ryan said weakly, and Jordan just nodded.

            “Okay. Ryan, stay mostly still, let me fuck myself on your cock. Got it?” The whimper that produced from Ryan indicated that not only did he get it, but he thought that was ridiculously hot. Jordan had to agree there.

            “Can you do it, before I die of blue balls?” Jordan asked shakily, and next thing he knew Taylor pulled out, presumably back onto Ryan’s cock judging by both of their moans, before thrusting back into Jordan. “Oh, _God_.” Taylor didn’t stop. He was going slower than the last time he’d fucked Jordan, agonizingly so, but every push inside felt so good Jordan’s eyes were practically rolling back in his head. Just as Jordan was pretty sure he was going to completely lose his sanity--it felt incredible, but it wasn’t quite enough to get him off--Taylor bent halfway over him, slid his hands around Jordan’s torso again, and pinched Jordan’s nipples. Jordan made a completely involuntary sound of pleasure that was embarrassingly obscene even to his own ears, and Ryan must have agreed, because Jordan heard him cry out as he presumably came. Ryan collapsed down to the mattress, and Taylor swore in Tuscan again, thrusting exactly twice more before his hips stilled and he came buried inside Jordan. Taylor pulled out, and Jordan whined in incoherent protest, feeling empty and aching and beyond desperate.

            “On your back,” Taylor said hoarsely, and Jordan obeyed immediately. Taylor manhandled his legs apart and settled himself between them, licking the head of Jordan’s cock as he pressed two fingers inside him, and Jordan moaned helplessly as Taylor found his prostate just as he slid Jordan into his mouth. Jordan’s back was arching up of its own volition, and he was babbling nonsensically as Taylor worked on him, going slowly and teasingly because apparently he hated Jordan and wanted him to die from lack of blood flow to his head. Ryan rolled on top of him and pinned him to the bed, whispering soft words of encouragement and affection in his ear, and just as Ryan pinched his nipple again the lights flicked off in Jordan’s brain and he came, streaking cum all over his stomach and chest.

            He lay there in a blissed-out, post-orgasmic daze, Ryan dotting absentminded kisses across his chest, until suddenly Jordan was reminded of exactly why he and Ryan and Taylor had just fucked and his eyes snapped open. Taylor was sitting there, looking at the two of them with an oddly wistful expression, or as wistful as a demon probably could get. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were the brightest blue Jordan had ever seen them, and Jordan guessed he was at as full power as was possible.

            Jordan and Ryan sat up, and they sat there for a minute or so looking at Taylor, who looked back at the two of them steadily.

            “You’re still sure?” Ryan asked finally, and Taylor nodded.

            “I’m still sure.” He smiled halfway at them. “If it doesn’t work,” he said, “if I die, or God forbid lose control and kill you, I just want you two to know that these past three weeks have been the best three weeks of my very, very long life.” Jordan swallowed to try and get rid of the lump in his throat, at least enough to speak.

            “I love you,” he said. “As much as I love Ryan, and that’s a hell of a lot, okay?”

            “Same here,” Ryan said. “No matter what happens, that won’t change.” Taylor nodded.

            “Yeah.” He leaned forward, and with shaking hands, Ryan reached around his neck and undid the buckle to the collar, pulling it off and casting it onto the floor. There was a split second of perfect stillness, and then Taylor crumpled to the mattress, eyes closed and body limp. His horns had vanished. Jordan stared at him, willing him to move, praying helplessly for his eyes to open, but the minutes slipped by in silence and Taylor didn’t even twitch. Eyes watering, Jordan looked over at Ryan, to see that he was on the verge of tears too. He pulled Ryan into his arms, and they held each other for a long time, Jordan’s eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to look at Taylor.

            There was the sudden sound of someone taking a very deep breath.

            Jordan’s eyes flew open as Ryan twisted out of his grip to turn and stare at Taylor, whose chest was now definitely rising and falling. He was _breathing_. His eyelids fluttered, and then slowly, they opened as he rolled over and looked up at Jordan and Ryan. His eyes were still blue, but they’d settled on a slightly softer, grayer shade, a more human shade. They focused, and then Taylor smiled, wide and gorgeous and positively overjoyed.

            “Hi,” he said. “I love you.”

 

_Taylor_

 

            Jordan and Ryan stared at him, looking disbelieving and relieved and unbelievably happy, and Taylor waited for them to collect themselves, trying not to feel nervous. Ryan found his voice first.

            “You love us?” he said weakly, and Taylor nodded.

            “I’m guessing that’s what this feeling is, anyway.” He looked around the room, blinking a little. The world looked different as a human--both fuzzier and clearer at the same time. Also, his heartbeat in his ears felt incredibly novel, as did breathing. “I’ve...I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

            “Is that a good thing?” Jordan asked, and Taylor reached out to brush his fingertips along the side of Jordan’s face, trying to reassure him.

            “It’s such a good thing, you have no idea.”

            “What does it feel like?” Jordan asked tentatively, and Taylor tried to think of the right words to describe the new, overwhelming emotion that was filling his chest.

            “It feels...a little scary,” he said finally. “Helpless, I think is the right word. But at the same time, looking at the two of you, it’s like you’re the best, most perfect, most wonderful things in the world and I can’t believe...knowing we’re going to be together makes me happier than I ever was as a demon.” Ryan and Jordan exchanged looks.

            “I think he loves us,” Jordan said finally, and Ryan smiled at him shakily.

            “I think you’re right.” Ryan turned back to Taylor. “Does that new feeling still include wanting to fuck us?”

            “Are you kidding?” Taylor said, his voice turning a little rough at the idea. “I want to know what making love feels like.”

            “I think we can help you there,” Ryan said, and then he dove for Taylor.

            Taylor had never had sex for a reason other than sustenance. As a demon, he hadn’t truly understood why humans were so obsessed with it if they didn’t get food out of the deal, at least until he’d met Jordan and Ryan. As Ryan pinned him to the bed, kissing him soft and thorough, Jordan leaned down and started kissing over his chest, sucking lightly on his nipple, and Taylor was pretty sure that his newly beating heart was going to explode from the sheer force of how much he loved the two of them. Taylor had been very used to a demon’s emotional repertoire, which was limited to say the least, but the utter helplessness and all-consuming adoration he was experiencing now was something he’d never even conceived of feeling. He was hard in under a minute, and as Jordan fisted a hand around his cock and started to stroke it, Taylor had to break his kiss with Ryan in order to breathe. _That_ was weird.

            “What do you want?” Jordan murmured into Taylor’s chest. “We’ll give you anything we can.”

            “I want to watch you fuck him,” Taylor said, because even now that he wouldn’t feed off their sexual energy, the idea was amazingly appealing. “Although I wouldn’t turn down a blowjob at the same time.”

            “Done,” Jordan said, sitting up. Ryan did the same. “If that’s okay with Nuge, that is.”

            “Yes, because you fucking my brains out is such a goddamn hardship,” Ryan said with a wide grin, hunting around for the lube. He came up with the bottle, before looking at them. “Who wants to do the honors?”

            “I will,” Taylor said immediately, and Ryan laughed, handing over the bottle, before sprawling out on his back and parting his knees.

            “Go ahead.”

            Taylor had fucked many, many people many, many times over his long life, but when he slipped two fingers inside Ryan and Ryan sighed happily, closing his eyes and biting his bottom lip, Taylor felt a jolt of pride unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. Jordan was behind him, kissing over Taylor’s neck and shoulder and rubbing his hands over Taylor’s chest, and Taylor did his best to focus on stretching Ryan out and not how he was freaking out a little.

            “You’re trembling,” Jordan said, awed, making Ryan open his eyes to look up at Taylor in mild concern.

“Are you okay?”

            “I’m so fucking okay,” Taylor said vehemently. “This is just...very new.”

            “Just wait until I fuck you,” Jordan said with a grin. “You’ll like that, with feelings.”

            “God, yes,” Taylor said immediately, and both Jordan and Ryan laughed, Ryan a touch more breathlessly. Taylor found his prostate and pressed against it, and Ryan’s hips bucked up as he moaned, making both Jordan and Taylor swear. “You’re so beautiful,” Taylor whispered as he added a third finger, trying to finish stretching Ryan out, because he could hear Jordan’s breathing in his ear and knew that he was aching to get inside Ryan, not that Taylor was exactly feeling very patient at that moment either. “You’re both so fucking beautiful.”

            “You’re not exactly hard on the eyes, yourself,” Jordan said, and Ryan laughed, that laugh turning into a moan as Taylor touched that spot again.

            “Okay,” Ryan managed. “I’m ready.”

            “You sure?” Taylor asked, and Ryan nodded emphatically. Taylor pulled his fingers out and slid back so he was sitting up against the headboard, and Ryan got up on his hands and knees, crawling over to him. He fisted a hand around Taylor’s cock and licked the head, and Taylor gasped.

            “Come on, Jordan,” Ryan said, looking over his shoulder, and Jordan knelt behind him, rubbing his hands over Ryan’s back before lining himself up. Slowly, he pushed in, and Ryan’s face went slack as he groaned softly. Jordan, on the other hand, was panting and muttering under his breath. Taylor watched as Ryan collected himself, before he leaned down and took Taylor into his mouth. The slide of his lips on Taylor’s cock was erratic, especially after Jordan started moving, but it still felt incredible, and when Jordan found Ryan’s prostate Ryan moaned around Taylor’s cock.

            “Oh, fuck,” Taylor managed. His fingers tensed in Ryan’s hair, and Ryan looked up at him, smug and gorgeous and loving, still with Taylor’s cock in his mouth. When he came in Ryan’s mouth, Ryan swallowed and looked up at him, blitzed and beaming, and Taylor thanked every higher power he could think of that he’d chosen this.

            They lay in bed for a long time, curled sleepily into each other, perfectly content. Taylor was the one to break the silence.

            “I think I’m hungry.” At that moment, his stomach growled, and Jordan laughed, sitting up.

            “Yeah, you’re hungry. Want some food?”

            Jordan and Ryan made him a pot of Ramen noodles, and Taylor wolfed it down immediately.

            “Wow,” Ryan said. “Want more?” Taylor nodded, his mouth full of noodles. “I’ll make you a peanut butter sandwich.”

            Once they were done feeding him, Taylor rocked back in the chair at their kitchen table. He felt strange, now--oddly weak and a little out of it, and he was starting to feel nervous that maybe the spell had only worked temporarily and he was dying.

            “You okay?” Jordan asked him.

            “Um. I don’t feel so good,” Taylor said, and Ryan and Jordan exchanged worried looks.

            “What kind of not so good?” Taylor yawned, then, and Ryan and Taylor exchanged another look, this one amused. “Oh.”

            “What?” Taylor asked.

            “You’re sleepy. That happens to humans. It’s bedtime.”

            Before Taylor had become human but after Jordan and Ryan had admitted how they felt about each other, the two of them gone to bed together every night. Taylor would usually wander into the bedroom in the morning to wake them up and would find them curled into each other, fast asleep. Even as a demon, he’d felt jealous of that closeness. Now, though, he was in Ryan’s bed, Jordan on one side of him and Ryan on the other, the three of them spooning comfortably.

            “You know, I’m going to miss the horns,” Ryan mumbled as they were all drifting off. “They were pretty sexy.”

            “I can always make some out of clay,” Taylor responded. “If you feel the need to reminisce or whatever.”

            “Maybe,” Ryan said, and Taylor could hear the smile in his voice. “I’ll think about it.”

            “I’m more into finding you some leather pants, frankly,” Jordan said, yawning. “Now they were sexy.”

            “I’m trying to sleep for the first time, you two,” Taylor pointed out, and Jordan grabbed his hand, pressing a kiss to his knuckles.

            “Go to sleep, then,” he said. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”

            When Taylor drifted awake the next morning, he was alone in the bed. Sleepily, he staggered out to the living room, to find that Jordan and Ryan were making bacon and eggs.

            “Hey!” Ryan said brightly as Taylor came into the room. “We made you bacon, because it’s the best food.”

            “Okay,” Taylor said. It did smell really good. Jordan pointed at their kitchen table with the fork he was using to flip the bacon.

            “Have a seat.”

            Taylor might have been very happy he’d chosen mortality, but not everything about being human was sex and bacon and mushy feelings. He frequently found himself very annoyed at his lack of powers. Taylor now only had the strength of a typical young, athletic man, and he couldn’t sense fear or teleport any more, either. He’d even lost the ability to deepthroat on command, which frustrated him endlessly and Jordan and Ryan found to be totally hilarious.

             “Shut up,” Taylor said through coughing after he’d tried to blow Jordan and had triggered his brand-new gag reflex. “I didn’t have to deal with mortal limitations when I was a demon.” Jordan bent down to kiss him.

            “It’s _fine_ ,” he said. “We’re just glad you’re human. Ryan and I will so take that trade.”

            “I’ll teach myself again,” Taylor said, determined. “You’ll see.”

            “Well, if you really want to practice,” Jordan said, leaning back into the sofa cushions again, and Ryan, who was busily engaged in playing _Skyrim_ next to them, laughed.

            “I’ll be your guinea pig too, once I finish this level.”

            “You’re both so sweet. So self-sacrificing,” Taylor said with a grin, and Jordan blew him a kiss.

            “It’s a good thing we found that grimoire, isn’t it?” Ryan said later over dinner. They’d made hamburgers and Taylor was busily engaged in stuffing his face. “I wonder how it ended up in the bookstore.”

            “I wonder,” Taylor said, but he was unable to keep from grinning smugly, and Jordan dropped his hamburger onto the plate.

            “You had something to do with that.”

            “Of course I did.”

            “How?” Ryan demanded. “You weren’t on the human plane.”

            “Not in physical form,” Taylor said. “I was hanging around, though. Paying a bit of attention. To be honest, Ryan wasn’t even the target I was going after.”

            “Who was?” Ryan asked with some trepidation.

            “That clerk in the bookstore. Sam something.” Jordan and Ryan both promptly nearly fell off their chairs from hysterical laughter. Taylor grinned and went on. “I think this all worked out for the best, though.”

            “Yeah,” Ryan agreed. “Sam’s way too practical to fall in love with a sex demon.”

            “I’m glad you two weren’t,” Taylor said simply, and Ryan and Jordan smiled at each other, and then at him.

            “So are we.” 


End file.
